Its name may belong to the past, but the new DeLorean is going to look to the future, and it will be presented towards the end of the summer as part of the activities surrounding the Monterey Car Week, which includes the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.
The original model was quite the attraction in its own right during its short lifespan, but its place in history was probably ensured by its star turn in the Back to the Future movie trilogy. The DeLorean was only on the market for three years (1981-1983), but it became immortal thanks to Christopher Lloyd’s Doc.
The model featured styling that was decidedly avant-garde style for its time, including stainless steel panels and gullwing doors.
What many folks might not know is that when the company behind it was forced to close its doors, an impressive stock of parts was left behind. Enough to assemble hundreds of models, in fact. In 1995, a new company named DeLorean was born, and it got its hands on that stock of parts. The firm also set about acquiring existing models and their components where it could find them, and were even able to offer service to DeLorean car owners.
In 2015, the production of a tribute model was even announced, but that project has yet to come to fruition, delayed due to a host of factors, often administrative and legislative. Now, though, the Texas-based company is looking firmly to the future, starting with its presentation of an all-electric DeLorean vehicle this coming August at Pebble Beach.
However, it is towards the future that the company now based in Texas will turn with the presentation of an all-electric DeLorean car next August.
The DeLorean coming to the Concours will actually be a preview of the low-volume production vehicle currently in development. The new DeLorean will be powered by an electric powertrain, but executives are staying mum on technical details for now. However, company CEO Joost de Vries, who previously collected paycheques from Volvo and Tesla, did tell Car and Driver magazine that the new DeLorean would offer about 500 km of range.
The company has also hinted that the powertrain underpinning the new EV will be supplied by someone else, since DeLorean can't afford to develop it in-house.
The final product will be inspired by the original, but it will also integrate a fair mount of modern styling. The idea was to attempt to imagine what the car would look like today if it had continued to be produced over the last 40 years.
For now we only have a silhouette of a teaser image to guide us, so patience is in order. As for the odds of a production version ever seeing the light of day, well we won’t make any predictions except to say that we’ll truly believe DeLorean is back when the first models are delivered to buyers. In the meantime, it costs nothing to dream of course.