After an initial tease back in February and a rendered reveal of the whole car in May, DeLorean Motor Company officially revealed the real-life prototype of its upcoming Alpha5 EV at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance car show in Monterey, California today. IGN was there to see it, and you can take a look at our photos of the functioning prototype in the image gallery below.
The four-seat, two-gullwing-door Alpha5 coupe is the new DMC’s attempt to revive the brand after the initial car, the stainless steel DMC-12, went out of production after the 1983 model year when the original company went bankrupt. Here’s everything we know about the new car so far, including its expected range, performance, and price. The classic DeLorean, of course, has lived on in pop culture ever since, though, thanks to its starring role in the timeless Back to the Future movie trilogy, where it played the part of the time machine that sent a teenage Marty McFly from 1985 back to 1955, then later ahead to 2015, and eventually back to 1885.
The real-life story of John DeLorean, the larger-than-life automotive engineer who rose through the ranks at GM, creating the Pontiac GTO and starting the Muscle Car Era before becoming the head of Pontiac and subsequently leaving to start his own car company , has been told in a few mediums in recent years, notably in the excellent docu-drama Framing John DeLorean, starring Alec Baldwin.
The new iteration of DMC that’s creating the Alpha5 has no relation to the original company, though it owns Classic DMC, the long-running service and restoration network based out of Humble, TX that offers original, remanufactured, and new and improved parts for the original DMC-12, of which 6,000 examples are estimated to still be on the road of the original 9,000 or so built. (Disclosure: the author owned a 1982 DMC-12 from 1999-2012).
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlockedas well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor raw,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.