The Alleged Car: Difference between revisions

* Arguably one of the most famous examples, the DeLorean DMC-12. Despite the Lotus Esprit inspired design and gullwing doors, the car's production run seemed to be cursed from the word go. To elaborate: the factory was located in Dunmurry (a suburb in Belfast), Northern Ireland (bear in mind that this was in 1978, and it was placed [[The Troubles|frameright on a religious fault line]]; word is the factory had one entrance for Catholics and one for Protestants). Making matters worse alongside budget over runs, engineering hassles and production delays was the fact that almost all the workers had never had a job in their lives, much less one producing cars. the inevitable quality control problems that resulted from this were so bad that despite each car having a 12-month/20,000 km warranty, many dealerships refused to carry out any work on them because they weren't being reimbursed. To add insult to injury, far from being the thinking man's supercar its creator envisioned it to be, the DMC-12's performance was quite lacklustre, due to it being the victim of a watering down campaign. It was originally meant to have a rear-mounted rotary engine but this was changed to a mid-mounted 2.8 litre V6 due to fuel consumption concerns, however the change in powerplant reduced performance (it was initialy figured to have 150kw of power, but the changes resulted in the car only making 110kw in 'dirty' euro trim, the US version was an even sorrier 95kw due to requirements for catalytic converters and other emissions controls) and had a knock-on effect on the cars' already less than perfect 35:65 front/rear weight distribution. In the end the DMC-12 was too slow and sluggish to convince anybody it was the real deal, and allegations that John DeLorean had taken to drug smuggling in order to pay the bills were the final nail in the DMC-12's coffin.