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The De Lorean DMC-12 is an American sports car that was manufactured by the DeLorean Motor Company from 1981 to 1983 in Northern Ireland. It is most commonly known simply as the De Lorean, as it was the only model ever produced by the company. more...

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The DMC-12 featured gull-wing doors with a fiberglass "underbody", to which non-structural brushed stainless steel panels are affixed. A De Lorean was featured as a homemade time machine in the Back to the Future trilogy.

The first prototype appeared in March 1977, and production officially began in 1981 (with the first DMC-12 rolling off the production line on January 21) at the DMC factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. During its production, several aspects of the car were changed, such as the hood (bonnet) style, wheels and interior. About nine thousand DMC-12s were made before production stopped in late 1982. Today, about 6,500 DeLorean Motor Cars are believed to still exist.

History

In October 1976, the first prototype DeLorean DMC-12 was completed by William T. Collins, chief engineer and designer (formerly chief engineer at Pontiac). Originally, the car's rear-mounted power plant was to be a Citroën Wankel rotary engine, but was replaced with a French-designed and produced PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) fuel injected V-6 because of the poor fuel economy of the rotary engine, an important issue at a time of world-wide fuel shortages. Collins and De Lorean envisioned a chassis produced from a new and untested manufacturing technology known as Elastic Reservoir Moulding (ERM), which would contribute to the light-weight characteristics of the car while presumably lowering its production costs. This new technology, for which De Lorean had purchased patent rights, would eventually be found to be unsuitable for mass production.

These and other changes to the original concept led to considerable schedule pressures. The entire car was deemed to require almost complete re-engineering, which was turned over to engineer Colin Chapman, founder and owner of Lotus. Chapman replaced most of the unproven material and manufacturing techniques with those currently being employed by Lotus. The original Giorgetto Giugiaro body design was left mostly intact, as were the distinctive stainless steel outer skin panels and gull-wing doors.

The DMC-12 would eventually be built in a factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, a neighbourhood a few miles from Belfast city centre. Construction on the factory began in October 1978, and although production of the DMC-12 was scheduled to start in 1979, engineering issues and budget overruns delayed production until early 1981. By that time, the unemployment rate was high in Northern Ireland and local residents lined up to apply for jobs at the factory. The production personnel were largely inexperienced, but were paid premium wages and supplied with the best equipment available. Most quality issues were solved by 1982 and the cars were sold from dealers with a 12 month, 12,000 mile warranty and an available five-year, 50,000-mile (80,000 km) service contract.

Read more at Wikipedia.org