DeLorean Is Back With the All-Electric Alpha5 Sports Car

There’s plenty of cars that generate a big emotional response; mostly due to a long history and a healthy dose of the nostalgia that currently floods the industry, putting life into metal and glass. Some though trigger a response for entirely different reasons, and so here we have much excitement over the reappearance of DeLorean automobiles.

The original gull-wing door DMC DeLorean was a brief 2-year affair, but like short-lived bands that seem to last forever, the car captured the imagination of the public – much helped of course, by starring as the time machine vehicle in the Back to the Future movie franchise starting in 1985 and starring Michael J Fox. By the time DeLorean went into bankruptcy, only around 9,000 units had been produced, yet despite a reputation for poor build quality, an original low mileage 1983 DeLorean DMC sold at auction in 2020 for £73,125.

Well now the brand has been officially revived by Joost de Vries who has previously held roles at Tesla and Karma. The company is now a USA-based company, although DeLorean as a brand hadn’t actually disappeared, as Stephen Wynne had, up until the de Vries takeover, run DeLorean as an aftermarket support outlet since acquiring the name in 1995.

So that’s the brief history, but what can we expect from DeLorean in the future? Let’s face it, any car with a DeLorean badge has – despite the original’s poor reputation (we tend to forget that) – got quite a lot of hype to live up to – that’s nostalgia for you! First out of the block is the all-electric Alpha5, which despite looking nothing like the original DMC, somehow manages to look like a DeLorean might look today. Gone are the boxy straight lines in favour of more modern wind tunnel-friendly curves, though the long sweep from the top of the windscreen to the rear bumper does maybe hint at the original car’s flat, angled lines.

We will have to await a much-anticipated Pebble Beach launch to find out all we want to know about the DeLorean Alpha5, but de Vries has hinted that the sports car will reach 60mph from zero in about 3.4 seconds and have a limited top speed of around 150mph. Battery life is as impressive as the car’s grunt too, if it manages to achieve the promised 300 mile range without compromising performance too much.

As is the trend with such automotive beasts at present, it will be a very limited run of just 88 units – 88 being the speed that the DeLorean was required to reach to travel through time in Back to the Future. These prestigious few units will be track-ready only and not road legal. But fear not, after this initial flurry, the rebirthed brand plans to release the Alpha5 as a more conventional model and make it more widely available.

The look of the car is sleek, with sharp wraparound LED lighting and old-school rear window louvres in a hint to the Alpha5’s legacy. Oh and it too has gull-wing doors. The car will be manufactured in Italy and has been partly designed by Italdesign, a company under the watchful eye of Giorgetto Giugiaro; yes, the very same man that designed the original DeLorean DMC, although his most successful design is the far more down to earth VW Golf Mark 1.

It’s apt that DeLorean is already looking beyond the Alpha5 and into the future, with plans to produce a V8-powered sports coupé and a hydrogen-powered SUV. It looks like the SUV will follow hot on the heels of the DeLorean Alpha5 in fact, as the company is shrewdly looking at generating volume sales to survive in this competitive automotive world.

Images: delorean.com