Follow us on TwitterDeLorean To Be Reborn with the Solstice?
The DeLorean is iconic and recognized worldwide. It’s placement in the movie “Back to the Future” guaranteed widespread notoriety. Regardless though, for a small company that fizzled out it’s pretty amazing to be remembered like this.
The original car’s creator, John C. DeLorean, worked at General Motors (and specifically Pontiac) before he ventured off to create his own, one-of-a-kind car company. How ironic would it be now that a car from Pontiac might be saved by the company bearing his name.
When GM debuted the Kappa twins, most specifically the Solstice, it was met with much fanfare. Bob Lutz intended the cars to show a different GM, and they were developed at great expense. In it’s short model life the Solstice had a lot of success, even to the point of passing the Mazda MX-5 Miata in the sales race.
The closure of the Pontiac brand cut the model cycle of the car short, along with it’s Saturn Sky counterpart. Before the brand’s closure, GM commented that it was open to the possibility of selling the tooling and even the plant to build the Solstice to an outside company.
There didn’t seem to be any public interest in them – until now. Delorean Motor Company is looking into the prospect of building a car based on the Solstice and that they are excited about “putting several hundred people back to work” in Wilmington, Delaware. If this pans out, it would just be an amazing turn of events. I have always thought that the Solstice deserves to continue on – it is a good product.
The company that would be working to bring the Solstice back to life would be the Delorean Motor Company. It currently operates as a company that restores and fixes old DeLoreans, as well as offering upgraded “new” DeLoreans for the brand faithful.
I’m loving this idea. Despite my unwavering dislike of anything GM these days, I would seriously want a Delorean. Unless, of course, it was just a stainless steel-bodied Solstice with that same, crappy plastic dash.
I say, use the platform, the drivetrain and whatnot, but keep the styling queues to a minimum. Delorean should have it’s own look and feel.
I am hesitant to buy anything with a GM or Chrysler logo on it; both manufactures’ have repeatedly built too many junky cars. They need to steer clear of old ideas as a way of rebuilding a company, and need to become innovators, and not followers. What ever they produce if it is a Delorean type model, it should be fun, cool, reliable and affordable ($30,000-$35,000).
The idea of DeLorean rebuilding the Solstice is an interesting idea, however I do agree that they should redesign the car just a little more (I.E. headlights & taillights, replace the rims with a spacey 5-spoke design, etc.) just so that it has that futuristic identity that the DMC-12 was known for. They do just that, then we’ve got ourselves the DeLorean Solstice. Heyal, I wouldn’t be surprised if they gullwinged the coupe version…Then again, I wouldn’t mind they did that anyway…
By the way, Austin, I think it should be more affordable than that; I believe it should start in between $19,000 and $25,000…