DMC 12

In 1975, a decidedly unusual sports coupé, commissioned by a "private" client, former GM Vice Chairman John Z. DeLorean, began to take shape. He had decided to establish a new brand, trying his luck with a somewhat inverted process: design and prototyping in Italy, production in Europe, and sales in the US. His target market would be those American customers who collected sports cars by GM and Ford.

The new DeLorean DMC12 was an ambitious project, meant to be cheap but at the same time extremely appealing: a brushed steel and plastic compound body, soft-nose bumpers designed to exceed US standards, gull-wing doors (the second standard production model following the 1954 Mercedes 300 SL), and a 90 degree V6 longitudinally mounted rear mid-engine, offering 2849 cc and 137 HP.

The DMC project, obstructed by the US establishment, which reacted furiously to the manager-turned-defector, met with a series of trials and came to a halt when the owner yet again found himself in financial hardship. The factory, which emerged from nowhere in Northern Ireland, near Belfast, with financing from the British government, was to have shipped 10,000 units a year. Production, which began in 1981, came to an end with unit number 8,700.

The model did however win the hearts not only of Americans but also of lovers of science fiction from all over the world some years later following its role as a time machine in the “Back to the Future” film trilogy directed by Robert Zemeckis.