DeLorean is an American car brand with two distinct operating periods – in its original form in the late 1970s to 1981 and since 1995 under new ownership. Only one DeLorean model – the DMC-12 – has been produced to date.
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Who Makes DeLorean Cars?
The story of DeLorean cars is long, wild and better covered elsewhere. The basics are that the brand was created by John DoLorean, a Detroit native and former executive at General Motors, in 1975. Its first – and only – car was the DMC-12, a distinctive two-door sports coupe with gullwing doors, a V6 engine and unpainted stainless steel bodywork. You might know it better as the car from the movie Back to the Future. Built at a factory in Northern Ireland from 1981 and dogged by production problems, a high price and poor performance, the DMC-12 was a sales flop and the DeLorean Motor Company went bankrupt in 1982.
In 1995 Englishman Stephen Wynne, who ran a successful car repair business in California, acquired the DeLorean name and a huge supply of original parts and began repairing and rebuilding DMC-12s in Humble, Texas. In 2022, the reborn DeLorean Motor Company announced plans to start building an all-new, pure-electric four-seat model called the DeLorean Alpha5.
