Highly Anticipated New DeLorean: Was it worth the Wait?

For weeks if not months several people from the new DeLorean startup in Texas have been sending out teasers of what was the new DeLorean, the successor to the famous DeLorean DMC 12. At the time the DMC 12 was penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro from Ital Design, who at the time had been coming out with quite a lot of very exciting looking super car concepts and production designs. Notably the Lotus Esprit, the BMW M1 and a series of Maserati concept and production vehicles.

Even after the DMC 12 Giugiaro introduced some exciting concepts, like the Lancia Medusa and the Lotus Etna. From the book on the history of the DeLorean DMC12 there were at the time indeed proposals for the 2 door coupe we know now, as well as 4 door versions with 4 deats, with hints of the Lancia Medusa in their designs.

So I was very excited to find that the new DeLorean would indeed be going down that 4 seat direction. When they mentioned the Medusa concept in the press release it was even more exciting. Excitement building!

So, in a series of very badly coordinated events on Sunday evening May 28th at 9 PM PST, 6 AM in Italy, DeLorean decided to do a 2 hour YouTube LIVE event where, after a lot of talking, they finally showed the images on the web site and discussed how cool they were. The web site itself of course was not LIVE at all yet, so we could not see the images other then how they were scrolled around by an impatient person at DeLorean. It was not until 24 hours later that the web site actually went live with the new content. I assume that both weird times were picked to please China? With so many plans needing so much money, it seems inevitable that there’s a lot of Chinese money behind this, and seeing that some of the new key players at DeLorean defected from the also Chinese owned Karma Automotive, this seems logical.

Well, DeLorean has big plans, just like many other Chinese based start-up companies. Weirdly enough they all seem to want to play in the same market segments. One assumes that those are the high sellers in China, but do they match the DeLorean DNA?

NO!

This is neither a DeLorean nor a Giugiaro worthy design. At best I see a good excuse to revive the SAAB brand with this design, but then with conventional doors. This design has NOTHING to do with the original DMC12, nor with ony of it’s original design proposals. It also has NOTHING to do with Giugiaro’s original Lancia Medusa concept car, nor with any of it’s derivative proposals shown in the book about DeLorean.

What is this? it is yet another “13 in a dozen” designs that uses an old brand name under Chinese guise and tries to sell whatever sells best in China, referencing as many things from the illustrious past as possible, without actually having done anything with any of those references. A bunch of hollow advertising claims. Nothing more.

Of course all the stats are good, as they all are with any of them. The ONLY difference here is the use of gull-wing doors, but even that is not very convincing and will, in this guise, surely meet the chopping block when it gets to production. There is just no way this can be executed in light weight without significant compromises in body rigidity. That was why there were no proposals made in this direction after the Bertone Lamborghini Marzal concept back in 1970.

So, all in all, sadly a lot of hype, a lot of hot air, a lot of promise unfulfilled. Since DeLorean has been vague about when production will start, and where, lets hope they take this time to develop a proper DeLorean and does enhance the DeLorean brand DNA and hopefully honors the talents of Giugiaro in a much more deserving way than this.

Fingers crossed.