If you're despondent that you never got a chance to own a DeLorean DMC-12 (Back to the Future obsession, maybe?), start saving your pennies now.
What many people don't know is that the DeLorean Motor Company still exists and employs about 60 people. (While the original company went bankrupt in 1982, the company rose from its ashes, minus its deceased founder John DeLorean, in 2007). It currently supplies parts (the company estimates that there are still about 6,500 original DeLoreans on the road) and occasionally builds a new car on demand for people with a love of the stainless steel cars with gull-wing doors (and presumably very deep pockets).
But now the DeLorean Motor Company has new plans...big plans. The company plans to begin building entirely electric versions of their iconic car.
"The car of the future has really become the car of the future," said James Espey, a DeLorean vice president.
Espey says the company has already built a prototype car with an all-electric engine (which it displayed last Friday at an open house at its Texas headquarters). If everything works out, the next step is to begin building made-to-order electric DeLoreans. The company would begin taking orders in about 2013, charging about $90,000 each.
Said the company in its own announcement, "For several years, DeLorean Motor Company of Texas has been reconstituting the fruit of John Z. Deloreans’s troubled loins (phrasing!). Now we are working with electric-car startup Epic EV to put an all-electric DMC-12 into production by 2013."
In case you're looking to drop nearly a hundred grand on the fruit of anyone's loins.
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
