2y ago

TIL the DMC DeLorean, among many strange production choices, was made of stainless steel

I know it's obvious from the picture, but I never realized DeLoreans were stainless steel, which is very rare for vehicles made in the past half-century. DMC DeLorean Wikipedia here

Other DeLorean oddities:

The car did not vary design by year, but rather by production batch, making it hard to identify a DeLorean's year from its design
The car was expensive for its time ($25,000-$34,000 in 1982-1984) and sold as a GT style car, despite being relatively slow (0-60 in approx. 8.8-10sec)
"A total of four recalls were issued by the factory to correct problems such as a sticking throttle, front-suspension issues and an inertia switch"
"The original 80-amp Ducellier alternator supplied with the early-production DeLoreans could not provide enough current to supply the car when all lights and electrical options were on; as a result, the battery would gradually discharge, leaving the driver stranded on the road."

46 comments

The stainless steel made it very heavy, and it was underpowered. That's kind of a joke in Back to the Future, getting to 88MPH is non-trivial.
- It sounded like a lot when I was 6. My mom told me 40 mph was really fast.
  
  88 is fast. Faster than any highways in my country. Not that people don’t drive that fast here, but it’s not allowed. finger wag
Doc says the stainless steel bodywork is the reason he chose that car as time machine, when Marty is surprised to see it.
- "Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal...(watch beeps) Look out!"
- In the mad magazine send up he said its because John DeLorean almost did time
I don't care if the DeLorean is impractical. I think it's one of the classiest and timeless looking cars out there.
- In my mind no car will ever be as cool or gorgeous as Doc's time machine sliding off his smoky truck.
  
  I've always wondered, with the gull-wing doors, how did Doc get inside the car while it was inside the truck.
My boyfriend is obsessed with back to the future and we have seen 4/7 screen used deloreans.
Peterson museum in LA has a restored one on display, they also have a gold delorean and a few of the new concept designs.
We got to see the one in Universal Orlando that was just chilling out in the middle of the sidewalk for a long time, but that one has disappeared since COVID. We didn't even know this was a screen used one, we figured it was a replica cause people were walking up and touching it and stuff. Wild. Probably why it's gone now, too many people fucked with it and it has to be restored. It sat out in the Florida humid ass weather for years though and no rust.
Unfortunately 2 are in Japan in private collections, but I don't think anyone knows who owns them. 2 we saw were in a private collection, but the owners gave us a tour and we even got to sit in one of them (the other is the one they destroyed with the train). And the fiberglass one from 2 was destroyed so we will never see it :(
- I definitely saw the one at Universal Orlando and am also surprised its a legit version. Also saw some Fast and Furious cars there so they might have been also!
  
  If you saw it before 2020 then yes it was the real one. They replaced it with a replica when they reopened post COVID
  Universal actually treats a lot of their props and cars like shit, but I didn't know that when I was visiting lol. They are the ones that destroyed the fiberglass car
Still beats a refrigerator for time travel. (Yeah, that was the original plan for the film. Switching to a futuristic-looking car was definitely the right decision.)
Crappy as this car may be, it's still pretty awesome seeing a DeLorean in a real life situation. I literally saw a DL in a Wal-Mart parking lot three year ago, and geeked the hell out. The owner even had a Back to the Future reference on his license plate!
- Encouraging kids to play Back to the Future by getting into a refrigerator could cause some problems. I'll always remember, my brother got a closet door slammed shut on his finger when we were playing Indiana Jones.
- If you had said a fridge was the original plan for Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I would have believed that, too.
Not only it is stainless steel but also it was directionally sanded so it has a "brushed" finish. If you have scratched it you had to use a specific grit of sandpaper and directionally "rescratch" it to return the original look.
It was a sexy car though
By all accounts the DeLorean is a piece of shit. But the design screamed The Eighties. Back when we thought the future was a series of hard edges.
- I still do, man look at that thing
Only the outer body panels were stainless. The functionnal car was basically a lotus chassis and an under powered peugeot engine. Many claims were made when it was announced but the final product was literally just the shell with a different car underneath. And it ended up twice as expensive as what they planned.
- I think it was a Volvo engine
The DeLorean was also one of the first self-driving cars.
You just pulled onto the road, and it would follow any white lines.
- Is this a joke/reference I’m not understanding?
  
  The company's founder was charged with cocaine trafficking but found not guilty due to police entrapment.
  Also, it was the '80s and there was a pretty big overlap in the target audiences for the DeLorean and cocaine.
It also used a renault transmission, which could only barely take the power of the stock engine.
- I think Alpine is still using that one in F1 today…
Stainless steel doesn’t rust
- It doesn’t, but if I recall correctly there were a lot of owners complaining that the brushed finish would discolor if you touched it with your hand. Body oils and salt left finger marks everywhere from people touching the car.
- It's steel which 'stains less' than plain steel, it most certainly corrodes. Leave it in a salt-water environment, it'll be gone in no time. For most non-culinary applications, either a maraging steel or plain steel with a coat of paint will be a better long-term choice.
  
  "Stainless" not "Stainnone."
- It does.
It also made them heavy and slow vehicles.
For those of you that don't know, the car was manufactured as cheap as possible so the owner could use them to traffic cocaine. The stainless steel was a design choice to make it easier to cut off parts of the car to retrieve the drugs. The Wikipedia states that the first prototypes were carbon fiber but supply chain issues caused the car to be too expensive. They basically made the cheapest thing passable as a drug mule, sold it for some crazy price, and packed drugs into it.
Put it with the big spoons, not the little spoons.
Coke. A lot better of coke..
https://delorean.com/
- Wait, is this for real or some sort of crypto scam? When are they slated to release?
As a sports car, it was a piece of crap, my Kia Forte could beat it in a drag race. You can't beat that iconic design, however.

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