New DeLorean is a modern reimagining of the famous model from “Back to the Future”

If you’ve seen the new DeLorean Alpha5 electric car, you might be disappointed that it doesn’t look much like the famous DeLorean DMC-12 from the Back to the Future movies. Really, other than the gullwing ports, there isn’t much that clearly connects the cars.

But the Alpha5, which made its public debut recently, looks like some DeLoreans you might not remember because none of them were actually made.

It’s one thing to buy the DeLorean name, put it on some new vehicle, and declare it an “official DeLorean.” But the DeLorean DMC-12 was an icon of modern design. His successor must not only be named DeLorean, but must also look like a DeLorean.

But after 40 years, what should a DeLorean look like? It should certainly at least look a little like the DMC-12 that starred in the movies, but the car company went bankrupt before the first movie even debuted. Thus, the company’s designs did not evolve in the following decades in the same way as those of other car brands. Ironically, the “Back to the Future” car remained firmly stuck in the past. To imagine what the DeLorean of today would look like, the company’s new designers had to fill a nearly 40-year gap.

They wanted to imagine what the DeLoreans would be like if everything hadn’t stopped. To do that, they filled in some pretty big gaps in the timeline, starting with the future the original automaker had envisioned for itself.

As it turns out, the progenitor of the Alpha5 really wasn’t DMC-12. Instead, the Alpha5 has its roots in the DeLorean’s second car: the four-seater DMC-24, a car the new designers didn’t just invent.

As it went off the market in 1982, the original DeLorean Motor Company never produced the DMC-24, despite it being in development. ItalDesign Giugiaro, the Italian design firm that created the angular, bare metal form of the DMC-12, went so far as to create a concept car version before the DeLorean went under. The DMC-24 was finally unveiled in late 1982, in slightly modified form, as the Lamborghini Marco Polo concept car.

Then, of course, there are all the other cars that ItalDesign helped develop for the DeLorean over the next 40 years. There was the Alpha2, unveiled in 1996, the Alpha3 from 2006, and the Alpha4, a hydrogen-powered SUV launched in 2013.

Okay, not really. The new DeLorean once again turned to ItalDesign, now a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, to design its new cars, and together they decided to create a detailed fictional design story for the brand.

None of these vehicles – Alpha2 to 4 – ever existed, but DeLorean executives and ItalDesign designers speak of them as if they did. There are quarter scale models of all these cars. There will be period car magazines with these “newly revealed” models on the cover. There are Hot Wheels packaging designed by graphic designers at Mattell in the correct style for each period, as if the toys were hanging on drugstore shelves in the past (Hot Wheels is actually selling a DeLorean Alpha5 model).

The new DeLorean Motor Company and its partners at ItalDesign are not trying to trick people. Anyone who has been alive for much of the last 40 years knows that these vehicles never existed. But just going back to a 1982 car to design a modern vehicle would leave the company stuck with a “retro” look that could only be applied to one model, said CEO Joost de Vries. So the designers invented a story as a way to free themselves from the constraints of real history.

The process of creating different vehicles helped the designers discover key elements of the DeLorean’s “design language”, such as a subtle front wing. It was modeled on the band of darker material on the nose of the DMC-12, but turned into a functional aerodynamic feature. The Alpha4, the SUV, will serve as the model for the next planned DeLorean model after the Alpha5, an electric SUV.

A Darker Reality and the Birth of a New DeLorean

This fake story sounds promising, but the real DeLorean story was much darker. It stands as a warning to any number of new automotive start-ups, including the new DeLorean, about how wrong things can go and how fast. After just starting production, DeLorean went into liquidation shortly after its founder, former General Motors executive John DeLorean, was arrested on drug charges in a videotaped sting operation. He was later acquitted, but the company, which was struggling anyway, did not survive.

DeLorean’s assets were purchased by a Texas mechanic named Stephen Wynne, along with other undisclosed investors. Wynne’s company has built a reputation for maintaining and repairing DeLoreans. The initial plan was for the new DeLorean company to make electric versions of the original DMC-12, but in recent years a much bolder plan has been hatched.

The new DeLorean Motor Company was formed, with Wynne’s original company as the largest investor, to manufacture all new electric vehicles. De Vries, who previously worked with Tesla and Karma Automotive, another electric vehicle startup, leads the company, and a new headquarters is planned in San Antonio.

For now, there won’t be a DeLorean factory, said de Vries. The company will work with an outside company to build the cars, according to de Vries, just as start-up Fisker is doing with its new Ocean SUV. Alpha5 is planned as a limited edition. Only 9,531 will be built, just one more than the DeLorean built with the DMC-12. The company expects these cars to be in production sometime in 2024.

“The coupe is our prestige car,” said de Vries. “It’s incredible. It’s the purest interpretation we have of the brand, but we need to get to the SUV if we want to become an automaker.”

That was a big part of the reason for a made-up story. DeLorean needed a design heritage to build on, he said, in order to extend these more evolved themes into vehicles that may not have even been anticipated in 1982. De Vries expects to unveil a new DeLorean full-size luxury SUV in early 2019. 2023

“We’re actually launching our second-generation SUV,” de Vries said, “because we had an SUV in 2013.”

Well, not really, but the designers will work with the Alpha IV to derive the company’s future production SUV. After the radical-looking Alpha5, de Vries promises, the big SUV won’t be conservative and restrained.

“We can’t afford to have a brick,” he said.

DeLorean also unveiled two concept vehicles at the house in Monterey, California, where the company was showing off its first planned production model. One of them, the Alpha5 Plasmatail, is the version of the Alpha5 with a higher rear for more storage. The other, the Omega, is an extreme off-road EV with huge tires and a slender body high off the ground.

DeLorean designers have filled in the past and are looking to the future. For now, the present remains a work in progress.