My DeLorean came courtesy of my wife's grandfather. He had purchased this car in the early-to-mid 90s and was the third owner, purchasing the car with just over 5,000 miles on the clock. When I bought it, after his passing, in August of 2012, it read 6,043 miles.
The DeLorean has a wonderfully storied history. Designed to be a stylish and relatively affordable supercar, it
had a host of extraordinary names behind it - the least of which is John Z. DeLorean himself, who was the creator of
the Pontiac GTO while he worked for GM. The chassis and suspension was designed by Colin Chapman, of Lotus, and that
incredible body was imagined by Giorgetto Giugiaro (of Lotus Espit, BMW M1, amongst many others).
A DeLorean factory was built in Belfast, in Northern Ireland and local people staffed the floor. From the start there was
serious quality issues of the production run, with shoddily assembled interiors the prime issue. The problem became so
bad that after the DMC-12s were shipped to the states they ran through a second workshop to correct the worst issues before
being released to the public.
The company finally folded, after only two years of production. Between lackluster sales, the expense of rebuilding the
earlier cars, and publicity surrounded John Z. DeLorean's arrest for cocaine trafficking (later dropped), the DeLorean Motor
Company fell apart. The body dies were sold for scrap and used as net anchors in the sea (the origination of the myth that
the government threw the dies overboard so no one could make new panels for the cars), and all of the parts were purchased
by an American company which, now, produces brand new DeLoreans - from original 1981/82 factory parts - in Texas.
My DeLorean has some issues, but largely type problems that have been compounded by years of storage.