"The DeLorean is one of the most recognisable cars of all time. That angular design, the square headlights, those gullwing doors, the brushed stainless steel panels and a starring role in the Back to the Future movie trilogy have anchored "
DeLorean DMC-12
My good friend and graphiste genius Mickey Boy G palmed me this superb piece of historic 1980’s car culture a couple of weeks back. Yes, it’s an original, vinyl-bound sales brochure for the DeLorean DMC-12. The audacity of Mr DeLorean’s vision is encoded beautifully in this piece of print – and the car’s totemic status reflected in the unusually evocative way it is represented.
The controversy of the DeLorean story is well known – shot through with allegations of corruption, tax-fiddling and other nefarious twists and turns worthy of an episode of Dallas – which was the big TV hit in the late seventies and early eighties – the time at which the drama was in progress.
There was something of the JR Ewing about Mr DeLorean himself. He had the chops to put himself front and centre of a huge enterprise and take the slings an arrows when it went south. But taking the boss out of the equation entirely -if you care about creative car culture you can’t help but be impressed with the product itself.
Sealed into pop consciousness as the Flux Capacitor-aspirated time travelling machine in Back To The Future franchise – it was the Giugiaro-penned brushed steel panelled body and the gullwing doors that assured its place in the memory. Although there were allegations too, of business mismanagement throughout the time of its existence – it was probably the desperate global recession of the late seventies that had a truly crushing effect on the car’s viability.
No matter.
The DeLorean DMC-12 the kind of car that will be remembered in little boys dreams for decades to come.
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