It's impossible to write TimeMachiner and not talk about the reveal of the "New Delorean". For a few months the Delorean Motor Company (no relation to the original DMC) has been teasing something new. A couple of silhouettes were put onto their homepage and that was it. Some rumors were floating around on whether it would be stainless steel, how powerful it would be, and what it would price at. Now we have our answers.
This new "delorean" is dubbed the Alpha5. It's a fully-electric car sporting a 100kWh battery pack, a 2.99 second 0-60 and a $175,000 price. From reporting that all sources back to the Alpha5's press release, this car has some ties to Giorgetto Giugiaro's ItalDesign studio. Giugiaro designed the original Delorean. While some nods to the original are there with the gullwing doors and louvers over the rear, this car is nothing like a Delorean.
To quote The Doctor from Doctor Who: I don't like it.
Yes it's a sleek car and yes it has arguably the best feature of the Delorean with those doors. Heck, it seats 4, which is something the Delorean can't do. But this is not a Delorean. ItalDesign brought none of the original Delorean's lines or styling to this new car. I know drag and aerodynamics are king with EVs, but there is not a single angle on this car that evokes the DMC-12. It's yet another EV supercar this time with the Delorean badging. And when you're pushing a near $200k pricetag, this is a car that most people will never own. That is if they ever get to production.
Marques Brownlee posted a very interesting video a few months ago about how it's easy for all these companies to pop up and show off some renderings or drawings. It's also easy for them to build a concept car to show off to people. But the real hard part is actually building something en masse. Tesla, arguably the most successful EV car company ever, nearly went out of business in its early days. Tesla easily could've met the same fate as John DeLorean's company. Elon Musk's finances were able to save the company at a critical juncture.
So, yes, this new "Delorean" looks nice and I will watch to see what happens. However, in no way will anyone ever look at this and think "Where's the Flux Capacitor?"