A Brief History
On January 21, 1981, the DeLorean sports car started being produced in Northern Ireland, with production ending in December of 1982. Only about 9,000 of the futuristic cars were built.
Digging Deeper
Featuring gull-wing doors and a rear mounted V-6 engine that produced a paltry 130 horsepower, the DeLorean boasted stainless steel outer panels and struggled to reach 60 mph in a reported 8.8 to 10.5 seconds. For a purported “sports” car, the DMC loafed its way to a quarter mile in 17.9 seconds at a final speed of only 76.5 mph. For comparison, the two-door, two seat, 1981 Corvette had a published 0-60 mph time of 8.1 seconds. Buyers of the DeLorean got a strikingly interesting looking car, but not a high-performance model.
The DeLorean Motor Company went out of business in 1982 after failing to capture the fancy of the car buying market. Other miserable flops of cars promising to be innovative and exciting include the Sterling model 800 series that was based on the Rover 800 that was itself based on the Honda Accord and the Acura Legend, basically putting lipstick on a pig, so to speak. Over 35,000 of these cars were built from 1987 to 1991, with lackluster performance at a premium price, managing only about 8.8 seconds to reach 60 mph.
Chrysler tried to jump into the two-seater sports market with its 2004-2008 Crossfire but struggled to sell its 76,000 unit production run. At least its supercharged version managed a speedy 4.8 second 0-60 mph time.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What other ill-fated cars would you add to this list?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Stone, Matt. DeLorean: The Rise, Fall and Second Acts of the DeLorean Motor Company. Motorbooks, 2024.
Williams, Chris. DeLorean DMC-12 1981 to 1983: The Essential Buyer’s Guide. Veloce, 2018.
The featured image in this article, a JPG preview of a WEBM file by Nesnad of a DeLorean DMC-12, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
