After a hefty debate spurred my curiosity, I still am unsure why the DeLorean failed.

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Tornado

Tornado

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I don't understand, despite my love for the car, why it was a failure. Other than the obvious things (drug trafficking, for example), why did the company go belly up? It was driven by pretty much every celebrity in the country. It looked awesome. There was a huge waiting list full of people waiting to pay well over list price to get one. It was pretty well put together. It had a workforce putting it together with the best tools available at the time. They were probably somewhat cheap to make. They were selling every one they could make. All I can come up against these is that it was slow (though not incredibly so for a very early 80's car) and it didn't handle quite as well as originally promised. So why was the car such a failure after less than 10,000 cars were built?
 
Toronado
I don't understand, despite my love for the car, why it was a failure. Other than the obvious things (drug trafficking, for example), why did the company go belly up? It was driven by pretty much every celebrity in the country. It looked awesome. There was a huge waiting list full of people waiting to pay well over list price to get one. It was pretty well put together. It had a workforce putting it together with the best tools available at the time. They were probably somewhat cheap to make. They were selling every one they could make. All I can come up against these is that it was slow (though not incredibly so for a very early 80's car) and it didn't handle quite as well as originally promised. So why was the car such a failure after less than 10,000 cars were built?
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Ummmm a few bit in here that are not quite ringing true for me.

The DeLerean certainly wasn't put together well, in fact quality control at the factory was so bad that once the cars hit the US most had to be 're-assembled' just to be well enough put together to sell.

While the factory was well kitted out the workers had virtually no experience of manufacturing cars, which did not help the ramp up time to production.

Combined with the poor performance of the car for its price tag and revisions forced on the car by the US government (mainly around bumper set-up) forced a change to the ride height and spring rates, which did not do the handling any favours at all. The (mainly) Renault sourced drivertrain was not the most robust item in the world either.

Combined with the legal issues JDL then faced no one wanted to go near one at all.

Its a shame because despite the bodywork (sorry but I consider the entire idea of stainless steel bodywork to be a very bad one) the car was a sound idea that was flawed in its implementation.

I've also had a quick look at the Wiki section on the DMC-12 and have to say its quite a biased piece, looking more favourably on the car, particularly in the area of production quality, that is actually true. This for example...


Wiki
Most quality issues were solved by 1982
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...which underplays that production started in early 1981 and finished in late 1982, and a large number of the production cars were built to a rather low standard.


Regards

Scaff
 
Mr. DeLorean had hoped to produce a 200-hp car, ended up with about 130. With that, you got the staggering 0-60 performance of almost 11 seconds! So you had a car that cost about 2 and a half Z28s and was slower. What's not to like?!??!!

Looking at the price, you say that mid-20s isn't that bad. It's not, today. But in the late 70's/early 80's, that was exotic money.

The DMC-12 failed because it was a piece of crap that met none of its potential, and nobody wanted one. It's damned hard to run a successful business by selling one thing nobody wants, and not even able to deliver that with reasonable quality.
 
I've known two in real life. They were largely crap. Underpowered, heavy, floppy, expensive, not particularly practical or reliable. The US-spec rubber bumpers had to be painted to match, and how exactly do you paint something 'stainless steel' color? The one guy I knew was a regular at my father's car wash, and he said you needed to wash it all the time to keep it looking decent. He carried a full bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels with him everywhere in order to keep the fingerprints off of it.

Never mind that fact that it was not stainless steel underneath, which is where the rust usually starts.
 
Oddly, the whole DeLorean saga was an almost carbon-copy of the Bricklin SV-1 debacle from 7 or 8 years previous.
 

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