Archive for the ‘automatic transmission’ Category
For those who are huge fans of the “Back to the Future” trilogy, the car used by Marty McFly and Dr. Emmet Brown is one of the most iconic and memorable piece in the movie about the time traveling misadventures of a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time and subsequent return to the present and travails into the future.
But even though the car is familiar, not many people knew the name and model of the car used as “time “machine”. This custom sports car is called the Delorean DMC-12 and was manufactured by the DeLorean Motor Company, founded in 1975 by John DeLorean, the American engineer and automobile executive mostly responsible for developing the Pontiac GTO, widely considered as the first muscle car.
It was supposedly to be named Z Tavio after John’s middle name and his son’s first name (Zachary) and John’s father’s name and son’s middle name (Tavio) but it ended up being called DeLorean DMC-12 or simply known as the “DeLorean”.
It is said that the name DMC-12 came from the initials of the company, DeLorean Motor Company and the 12 being the original price of the car which was US $12,000. It had a retail price of US$25,000 and one would have to add an additional US$650 if the car would have an automatic transmission.
This custom car was the only model produced and manufactured by the company which originally had its manufacturing factories in Dunmurry, Belfast, Northern Ireland and was released into the American market from 1981-1982.
It is said that about 6,000 of these cars still exist today and are classified as a collector’s item. Stephen Wayne, a Texas entrepreneur acquired the trademark DMC logo and the remaining parts inventory of the original DeLorean Company and in 1985 started a separate company which bears the same name.
Situated in Houston, Texas, the company is responsible for assembling these custom cars from new original stock parts (NOS). The company also creates reproduction parts and is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) on a made to order basis for DeLorean cars using existing VIN number plates.
Though new DeLorean cars are still being produced, they are technically remanufactured “new” cars made from original parts. What makes this custom car unique is due to some of its unusual construction details such as unpainted stainless steel panels, gull wing doors and a rear-mounted engine at car swap meets.
The first prototype was completed in October 1976 by William T. Collins, the company’s chief engineer and designer who was previously the Chief engineer at Pontiac. The prototype used a PRV fuel injected V6 engine that was used instead of the Citroen Wankel rotary engine due to its poor fuel efficiency.
This custom car prototype was envisioned by both Collins and DeLorean to use a chassis that is produced through a technology called Elastic Reservoir Moulding (ERM). Though this was new and untested, DeLorean had purchased patent rights for this technology which was subsequently found out to be unstable.
Because of this, changes were made drastically on the prototype leading to considerable schedule overruns. With Colin Chapman, founder and owner of Lotus Cars leading the re-engineering of the prototype, he replaced most of the unproven material and implemented manufacturing techniques that were being used at Lotus.
Chapman also utilized the backbone chassis, which is similar to the one used for the Lotus Esprit. Though much has been re-engineered, the distinctive stainless steel outer panels and its signature gullwing doors remained together with its original custom body design.
There were 9,200 DeLorean DMC-12 produced from January 1981 to December 1982, of which production stopped as the company went bankrupt.