DeLorean models

The DeLorean Motor Company was founded by John DeLorean in Detroit, Michigan, on 24 October 1975. Its factory was built at Dunmurry, near Belfast in Northern Ireland, from October 1978, and the British government provided about 120 million dollars of the roughly 200 million dollars of start-up costs.

The company built only one car, the DeLorean DMC-12. It had a stainless steel body and gull-wing doors and listed at 25,000 dollars. Production ran from early 1981 to late 1982, and roughly 9,000 cars were made. Sales of about 6,000 cars were far below the 10,000 to 12,000 a year needed to break even, and the company went bankrupt in 1982, with the loss of about 2,500 jobs. The car became world-famous as the time machine in the Back to the Future films from 1985, after the company had already closed. In 1995 Stephen Wynne founded a separate DeLorean Motor Company in Humble, Texas. See also classic cars.