Should Tesla have bought Delorean and built this car?

[Applause] hi everybody richard again here from electric classic cars and this week's video we're going back in time to the future with the delorean now i love this car not just because it's part of my childhood like with back to the future references and there will be a number of them in this video so warning you now it has been charging up on the 1.21 gigawatt charger all night it's just so we do a count off how many we get can cram into one video so here we are we're going to cover the teslorian as we've started to call it because this delorean is tesla powered and in my mind it's how it should have been from the factory if you like and then i've got the tesla in the background for a reason because there's a lot of similarities between this car and that car or more importantly between elon musk and john delorean because both of them were innovators back in their day and they were disruptors coming in with like you know a totally innovative uh solution to the automobile compared to the legacy manufacturers that were out there at the time from 4 gm et cetera et cetera but obviously at some critical point one went slightly south and one carried on to be what it is today so let's cover the car first before we get into electrification i mean it on paper should have been a massive success i mean the bodywork is stainless steel awesome idea uh very innovative um the design was by gigiaro so it's got timeless design i mean even now just look at the lines on this car i mean it just looks awesome now i mean i i would buy this car now if it was remade today i would buy this car because it just looks fantastic it the chassis was designed by colin chapman so lotus design chassis so on paper this should have been an amazing success stainless steel body lotus designs chassis fantastic styling and going doors i mean who doesn't like gull wing doors i mean it should have been brilliant but then the execution and i'm slowly working towards one of the achilles heels the execution wasn't so fantastic um there was a prv v6 engine in the back 2.8 liter which it's not a bad engine a lot of people say oh the engine was awful no it wasn't i mean there were some cars that had the same engine in like the the um gta was it the renault or the alpine gta alpine gta alpine gta had the same engine that's a great engine but unfortunately for californian smog laws i mean it just got strangled and although it's a 2.8 liter v6 it's only actually putting out or only was putting out 130 horsepower so quite asthmatic really especially when you look at the overall car just screams you know sports car but then when you actually got to drive one it was anything but a sports car and also you know handling wise it wasn't that great as well one thing that we've tried to do on this car i mean obviously we've we've not messed around with the styling whatsoever because just look at it it's right first time quite frankly but one thing we have done is um the design height of the front was was quite low it was just just right but unfortunately uh in the us they had to have the headlights a certain height above the uh road and the only way to sort that out was to raise the front end so you see a lot of deloreans kind of like look a little bit off-roady at the front well that's why so what we've done we've put an aftermarket coilover set up from kw which transforms the handling by the way anybody that's got a delorean do that it's it's a good thing to do but it also has lowered the front down to not quite design height but not that far off either but the good thing about this um suspension setup it's got adjustable height all the way around so you can actually um set it to where you need to be so that's the car itself i mean as i say it should have been a rave isn't success um but it got to it it was only in production for about two years but it got to a critical point where you know new companies often do especially when you're going from nothing to mass producing a car that's never been built before in factories that were never there before just like you know tesla did but at some point you're gonna want another cash injection and unfortunately as anybody that knows the story of john delorean knows that didn't happen whereas when tesla got to that cash crunch point they at the 11th hour got some money in and continued on to be the sex success that they are so what we're left with is an iconic car but let down in a couple of like areas which we've tried to address with the uh conversion that we've done on this car so without further ado let's get to the business end and talk about the electrification now there's not really any bad angles on this car from the rear i mean it just looks very 80s with these rear lights but we had a challenge as to where to put the charge point on this car because the filler is actually underneath the front um on the early ones there's a little flap but on this model you have to actually open up the the boot at the front to be able to fill it up and i ain't gonna fly when you're charging uh an electric car for a few hours so we put it underneath the number plate but if i just take it out here now that's about it now you can get the full effect of the rear um you're probably wondering what's going on with the tailpipes well uh what's happened is this uh rubber oh not rubber but plastic bumper is a little bit difficult with the shape and styling of it to fill the exhaust holes and they looked a little bit odd and lost without the exhaust so we've made some um stainless steel you'll be pleased to know exhaust pipes just to fill the holes and just keep the the look of the rear let's open up the rear and then you can have a look at the the battery packs so there's two covers on here so that's one and then that's the other so what we've got in this vehicle is a small tesla drive unit um theoretical top power of 300 horsepower but we're running a lower voltage so i'd probably say it's more like 200 horsepower which is plenty enough in this vehicle but loads of torque don't forget that's what really matters with electric vehicles uh we've got a 70 kilowatt hour battery pack so that's 14 tesla modules and most of them are in the rear here and then down buried underneath there um is the tesla uh motor itself and this is um as i say a i'm not sure what the name of it is it's kind of like a y remember what the name of the lotus chassis is there's a name for them isn't it um it kind of comes out like a y like that and the motor is buried down there and then this battery pack is essentially mounted uh off the engine mounts in the back here so most of the batch packs um in the rear and the rest is in the front so let's have a look at the front and the front is where the boot is or the front i think they call them in america um so the battery pack is actually underneath where the petrol tank used to be and here is actually where the petrol filler used to be so there we've just got the the brake fluid reservoirs now so you've still got uh i say a decent sized boot quite shallow but they always are on the delorean but obviously quite wide so in here it's still very much 1980s delorean so you've got plenty of grey vinyl big rocker plastic switches and stuff here we've obviously had to change the the dar setup because uh now it's got things like amps and uh voltage and motor temperature and things like that so we've got our own set of dars in there but we've kept some of the iconic little uh indicators like that the door open i mean you've got to keep that door opening alarm there it's just pure delorean and then here obviously we've got rid of that gear stick and we've got a direction knob now so yep internally it's pretty much as it was from the factory with a couple of little alterations but the main place where you find out the differences on this car is on the road so let's get on the road i nearly forgot the coolest feature that we've added to this car remote control door opening every delorean should have one do you remember those compilation albums in the 1980s oh no that's what i call music just like yeah with all those like sounds of the 80s things well this is the sounds of 80s for me yeah give me that just to tell you the keys in there and like if i start the ignition it's still on there now because you haven't got your seatbelt on if if this was mine i would take that buzzer out there we go we're good to go all right let's go have you uh filled up mr fusion yeah put banana skin in right you made a time machine out of a delorean now the first thing i noticed when i get in this car nothing to do with the tesla drive unit is the fact there's a vin plate reflected in the windscreen right in my eye line is that normal any delorean owners out there is that normal now although this car has plenty of apparent torque now there is one problem with it and that's its left hand drive so i need a co-driver like tim to tell me if i can overtake you no yes yep when you do overtake there's plenty of power but you do need a code right now we've got a bit more power and torque and we've upgraded the suspension by kw suspension package we're starting to put that lotus chassis to work a bit more go around some of these corners i wouldn't say it's a sports car but it's not too far away now actually right we've arrived at our destination we've done about 40 miles and taking around about 20 percent of the battery so what's that it's about 200 miles right yeah 200 maths boy yeah so we're gonna have a a pasty and a drink now and uh while we are i thought i'd uh would plug it in because it's free electricity note to the plug pilot there and not only that but it's also powered off the hydro power station just by the dam here because this is ellen valley so not just free but also renewable energy as well so come on in time for a pie mate [Applause] so there we go we've had an awesome day out here in ellen valley and uh as is much the case in wales it started to rain not that the stainless steel body cares much about that because they ain't going to rust but this car epitomizes what electric classic cars is all about it's taken iconix classic and just addressed some of the achilles heels of that classic which is in this case mainly the engine and to some extent the the handling was a bit poor as well so we've got that kw suspension all the way around now and obviously the tesla drive train to push it along the road and push it along it definitely does so there you go we've had a fantastic day out and um i'm interested to hear some comments below as to what other sort of um classics like film classics if you like would make a good electric conversion and what other classics are out there that were let down by its engine but if we convert them to electric would be vastly improved so let's have your comments below and we'll see you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Electric Classic Cars

Views: 91,005

Keywords: vintage votlage, delorean, tesla, electric car, back to the future, vintage voltage

Id: yfPelgfEjpo

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022