Two unlikely stars of the silver (and small) screen, the Ford Crown Victoria and DMC DeLorean were launched a decade apart… and although they are very different cars, they are familiar to audiences the world over.
Let’s start with the most unlikely one – the Ford Crown Victoria. The first model of this car rolled off the production line in Canada in January 1991. A big and fairly bland-looking thing (the Americans call it a “full-sized sedan”) it had rear wheel drive and a 4.6 litre V8 engine – although this only ever produced a maximum of 250 horsepower on production cars.
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| Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor |
But it was as a police car that the Crown Victoria found its fame. Massively popular with law enforcement throughout North America and also sold in the Middle East and Russia, the “Crown Vic” was durable, had lots of space, a decent amount of power and the street presence that a police car needs to be taken seriously.
Success in law enforcement was reflected in films and TV. The cops would drive a Crown Vic. Undercover FBI agents would hang around in an unmarked government plate Crown Vic. Whether it had police markings or not, the car ended up as something of an icon. And on the rare occasions it isn’t the law, the Crown Vic is also a popular choice for taxi drivers.
With some minor changes the Crown Vic stayed in production for 20 years, and despite being badly obsolete by 2011 it seems that police forces were reluctant to move on. Today, most of the Crown Vics on sale in the US are ex-police interceptors, many of which retain police colour schemes and are typically priced at $12,000 or less. Occasionally they are available in the UK and other countries having been personally imported. If ever you feel like remaking the Blues Brothers, then this car is probably for you.
The Crown Vic was a car aimed at the US market, but built in Canada. A decade earlier a very different car was aimed at the US market, but this time built in Northern Ireland. The DMC DeLorean (also called the DMC-12) was a two-seater sports car made famous by the DeLorean Time Machine in the Back to the Future Trilogy. But their relative paths to fame were very different.
Where the Crown Vic was a highly successful car in its niche, the DeLorean was frankly a disaster. Launched in 1981, it was only in production for just less than two years. A troubled development history compared with woeful quality control issues killed the company after only 9000 were built.
The history of the DeLorean is complicated and fascinating. The brainchild of ex-GM boss John Z DeLorean, the car was originally envisaged as a showcase for safety features using several highly advanced production techniques that had not been used before. These blue sky ideas were continually pared back as development proceeded.
Ultimately, what was delivered to customers had potential. The overall design of the car was penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign who – frankly – has designed some of the best-looking cars ever produced. The DeLorean had a clean, sleek design in bare stainless steel with gull-wing doors that gave the car plenty of “wow” factor. The tidy design continued inside, in an era when car interiors could be a thrown-together mess.
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| Early and late model DMC DeLoreans |
Added to the genius of Giugiaro was the work of legendary Lotus founder, Colin Chapman. Chapman was brought in quite late to the project to re-engineer the car in a way that it could actually be built. Chapman’s design borrowed heavily from Lotus. Things were looking promising with these two names on board.
A sticking point was the engine – originally designed to be a Ford V6, DeLorean then looked to use a complete drivetrain from Citroën before settling on the V6 offering from Peugeot-Renault-Volvo, placed in the back rather than the mid-engined arrangement planned. Although this 2.85L V6 was a solid enough engine it only gave a moderate 130 horsepower, and the shift to the back of the car impacted the handling and overall stance.
Despite having big names on board, the production of the DeLorean was plagued with problems. The British government forked out a staggering £77 million to help build a car factory in Northern Ireland. Now, although Northern Ireland has a rich engineering history, especially in shipbuilding and aircraft, it basically had none at all when it came to cars. So, everything needed to be built from scratch, and employees needed comprehensive training. Predictably, this led to severe problems with build quality – and cars leaving the factory often required extensive remediation work to make them saleable.
Faults were numerous, resulting in many recalls, and the goodwill that customers had soon evaporated. And even if everything worked properly, the unpainted stainless steel panels were incredibly difficult to repair if they suffered damage – you couldn’t simply fill and paint – and the car was underpowered compared with rivals such as the Lotus Esprit.
Sales were weak and unsold cars began piling up. Just a year into production, DMC were in serious financial trouble. Financial restructuring, incentives and improvements in quality didn’t help. In October 1982 things took a weird turn when John DeLorean was arrested trying to traffic cocaine in order to generate money to prop up the company. DeLorean was later acquitted though, as details of the FBI’s sting operation undermined the prosecutor’s case.
By the end of 1982 it was all over, except for a large number of unsold and heavily discounted vehicles. Several of these ended up with Universal Studios where they were converted for filming the Back to the Future trilogy. By the time the film came out in 1985, the DeLorean was something of a joke. The movie trilogy transformed it into a cult car – and over the years many replica DeLorean time machines have been built on top of the original cars.
Today, prices for a DMC DeLorean range between £30,000 to £50,000. But it’s not an easy car to live with, but I suppose if you find it too troublesome you could always take it back to the time before you bought it..
..and for the record, the Internet Movie Cars Database has nearly 10,000 references for the Crown Vic and 165 for the DMC Delorean. Make up your own mind about which is the biggest star.
Image credits:
Krokodyl via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0
IChurakv via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 4.0
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