Institution news
It was the 12 December 1989: I’m 12 years old and I’m going on my first trip to the cinema with my Dad to the old ABC in Doncaster, now long demolished and turned into “posh” flats. We took our seats and the start titles ran for “Back to the Future 2”.
What left that cinema that day was a 12-year-od boy with a dream that would be realised nearly 30 years later. An obsession of somehow owning a DeLorean Motor Company DMC 12, a.k.a. the Time Machine.
Unlike others I have spoken with, I really didn’t mind the lockdown restrictions. It’s been really good for me mentally and also allowed me to focus on my work and plan that better around my family life too. It’s also given me a new perspective on living life for now, because we never know what’s going be round the corner.
Delivery day
Realistically I’ve probably spent the last two to three years looking for the right DeLorean. This search has been a worldwide one, mainly centred in the US where I visited the main dealership for DMC (yes, it still exists), both in California and Florida, but also in Australia and Europe. I thought the best vehicle that would fit my requirements and my budget would have to be imported from the US. However with lockdown, by necessity, I switched to a more local search, on the off chance I would be lucky. Unbelievably the right car, in the right place appeared in Cheshire and in a running and MOT'd condition. There are only approximately 105 running DeLorean’s in the UK so it’s a very limited market. I had to act quickly!
Full lockdown had just ended which meant I could journey up to Cheshire to look at the car. Just as I was approaching, a special song came on the radio - Huey Lewis & The News, with “Back in Time”, or the theme tune to Back to Future. It was a sign I just could not ignore. I made an offer and arranged for it to be transported down to my house in London. That was it - I now owned a DMC 12!
The easy part was over! What comes next is my never-ending project. It's fair to say a DeLorean is not a car for everybody. Some of my colleagues and friends I work with at Formula Student did mock me at first when I said I want a DeLorean. They are right in a way, its reliability, its speed and handling aren’t ground breaking. For me though this car has never been about those aspects. I know it’s about the feeling I will get, making me feel like that 12-year old watching in awe of that film and of that car, in that cinema, all those decades ago.
As I said this project will never be finished. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of work I need to do early on though.
Removing the wrap
So it was time to start. The first thing was the black vinyl wrap that came with the DeLorean. The most iconic part about the DeLorean is its stainless steel raw finish. My DeLorean is a bit of a star: it featured in the National Geographic programme, “Supercar Mega build: DeLorean Reboot”. As part of that programme, a team went about rebooting modern day classics; my DeLorean was the donor car for this. Front to rear fascias were replaced with non-working parts, but thankfully the originals went back on when I bought it. As part of the show they put a black vinyl wrap on it to cover over the stainless steel; why I will never know. That was the first job: all that was coming off. Fortunately, the stainless steel underneath was immaculate - I gave a big sigh of relief when I realised that.
Gull-wing doors are rare and delicate
The next job - modify the driver seat. Unfortunately, I stand 6 feet 7 inches tall. Let’s just say the DeLorean wasn’t designed for a person of my stature. However as all good engineers do, we have to adapt and overcome and engineer the crap out of something if needed. With a slight modification to the fibreglass tub that sits on the Y frame steel chassis, I was able to move the seat back several centimetres and then I removed the seat adjustment rail which drops the seats by 3 or 4 cm giving me enough head and leg room clearance. Just.
Visiting the garage!
Only two critical jobs remain now. Any new DeLorean owner will know the first thing you change when you get a DeLorean is the high-pressure fuel lines. My car is currently on the original 40-year-old lines. These are very weak points but as the engine is a PRV (Peugeot, Renault, Volvo hybrid) the spares are pretty common and they were delivered the next day and fitted pretty quickly. The next job is more tricky; there are two torsion bars that power the iconic gull-wing doors. These are very rare and very expensive to replace and have a tendency to break quite easily if the doors are misaligned in anyway.
The roof box rear and subsequent alignment of the doors is the next job in waiting as I write this. Then will come the fun bit - driving it.
At some point in the future there will be a body-off chassis restoration and most probably a engine rebuild for longevity purposes. If true insanity sets in I will go full Time Machine replica too. I feel that itch will be very difficult to ignore after a few years at this rate.
I've had my DeLorean for several weeks now and I’ve lost count of the number of times I have gone into the garage just to look at it. It's surreal that after all this time it sat there with its own V5 in my name. I’m very lucky to be in this situation but I am also so excited about the hundreds/thousands of hours I have to look forward to in the future, tinkering and driving it.
Now if you will excuse me…I have a Flux Capacitor to install.