The Creation, The Rise, and The Fall
In October, 1976, the very first prototype DeLorean (which was then known as the DMC-12) was created by a man named William T. Collins. William was the chief engineer working for the DMC (DeLorean Motor Company) having previously worked with John DeLorean at other automobile manufacturing companies like Pontiac and Chevrolet. Originally, the car’s rear-mounted power plant was meant to be a Citroën engine (as seen in the very first, yet very problematic prototype) but a Wankel rotary engine was considered alongside it. When it finally came to production, a French-designed and produced Peugeot-Renault-Volvo (PRV) fuel injected V6 was used. There were constantly changes that were needed to be made to the original concept to complete the car properly but this lead to many schedule pressures. The design was just not working and it is very important for engineers to know what is and is not possible, which we learned already is an important aspect of modern day automobile design.
The engineers attempting to create the DeLorean soon came to terms with the fact that it would basically need complete re-engineering. The project was then handed over to a man named Colin Chapman, founder and owner of Lotus - a British manufacturer of sports and race cars. Chapman replaced the majority of the original material that was not working out and changed the manufacturing techniques to that of his own company (Lotus). The style of the chassis that is featured on the original DeLorean is very similar to that of the Lotus Esprit and the underbody was manufactured by a process developed by Lotus as well. The original body design however, the Giorgetto Giugiaro, was kept mostly intact! As were the iconic stainless steel outer-skin panels and gull-wing doors. DeLorean required $175 million to develop and build the company, and the DMC-12 was finally built in a factory in Northern Ireland. Something I found very interesting about this part of my research was that construction on the company began in October 1978, and transformed from a lot of land to the solid state of a factory in just twenty eight months! That time seems very unrealistic judging by today's standards and that is why it stood out so strongly to me. Also, most of the workers were very inexperienced but were paid premium wages and supplied with the best equipment available anyways. The company managed to get correct the majority of quality issues by late 1981 and the cars were available for purchase! It was not all doom and gloom when the company reached this incredible high point, but unfortunately, this moment only lasted about a year.
In late 1982, the DeLorean Motor Company filed for bankruptcy following the arrest of John DeLorean earlier that year on drug trafficking charges.He ended up being innocent but there was no way to save the company. All remaining parts that were left around the fallen factory were shipped to Columbus, Ohio and a company called KAPAC sold the parts to retail and wholesale customers via mail order. The unique stainless panels used to be stamped, making them useless to put on a vehicle and were either scrapped or dumped into the ocean, to be used as weights for a fishery, which I found so astonishing. It is kind of upsetting that they would just dump it all into the ocean, but the way that some of them were used for weights is interesting. Fortunately, thousands of new, unused body panels still exist and most of the supply is assured for years to come.
http://www.deloreanmuseum.org/car.html
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