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"I now have what many consider to be one of the worst cars in history," Bernardo Quintero posted a few days ago on his personal X account. The Malaga tech guru, founder of Virustotal and director of cybersecurity at Google, accompanied the text with a photo of a DeLorean DMC-12. The truth is that, despite its enormous fame thanks to the Back to the Future film, its winglike doors or even its overall shape and contours that suggest a great sports car, Quintero is not wrong.
So then, why get a DeLorean? The truth is that you don't choose what you fall in love with and I'm sure that, since its leap to the big screen, there are many more also in love with this American sports car. Moreover, according to data from Bonhams auction house, by 2019 it was estimated that the number of these DMC-12s in circulation was reduced from the 9,000 that originally left the factory floor to just 6,000, a number that will continue to shrink, so it is not a bad investment given the car's popularity. Still, let's get down to the nitty-gritty, the history of the DeLorean in general and Quintero's connection with the car in particular.
The history of this particular car has its origins in John DeLorean, a former General Motors executive who decided to take the plunge and independently create his own sports car, thus founding the DeLorean Motor Company on 24 October 1974. His aim was to create a ground-breaking, futuristic sports car that would be a departure from anything seen up to that time, and, all things being equal, he succeeded. John DeLorean commissioned the design of this peculiar sports car to the famous coachbuilder Giorgetto Giugiaro and Colin Chapman (founder of Lotus Cars) for the chassis. So much for their successes.
This ground-breaking creation was rightly lambasted by the press. First of all, the DMC-12 was built in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. The UK government offered numerous subsidies to locate the DeLorean factory in that area in an effort to end slums and revive the region's economy. Sadly, the local workforce lacked the skills needed to build the car, which had an impact on the final build quality, with doors not closing properly, misaligned body parts and general reliability problems. This was compounded by a set-up that did not work in sync with the vehicle's chassis, making the car unstable when taking corners and being driven at high speeds.
To make the whole vehicle move the American company opted for the V6 PRV engine at its heart, an engine born of a collaboration between Peugeot, Renault and Volvo. The naturally aspirated 2.8-litre V6 was not a bad engine in itself, but it was too little for what a sports car truly needs. It was capable of 130 horsepower at 5,500 revs and 207 Newton metres of torque at the same rpm. These figures allowed it to do zero to 100kph in just under ten seconds and to reach a top speed of 207 kilometres per hour. In addition, the use of steel for the bodywork made the final price more expensive, increased the body weight and made repairs more difficult.
As a result of all this the price the manufacturer was asking was too high for the product that the customer was acquiring, leading many in the media at the time to describe the DeLorean DMC-12 as one of the worst vehicles in history. A vehicle that looked like a wolf and behaved like a lamb.
More than two years ago, Bernardo Quintero conducted a poll on his X (then Twitter) profile about which car to buy. There were three candidates: a Mercedes-Benz EQS, a Tesla Model S and a DeLorean. It had nothing to do with the first two, but his community of followers spoke in favour of Doc's mythical car and Quintero didn't seem to dislike the idea. This is where Francisco Alí Manen, from Vélez-Málaga on the Costa del Sol, and his customisation workshop Lord Drake Kustoms came into play.
A few years ago Ali Manen posted on his social media channels a reminder of another DeLorean he had worked on years ago and, to the surprise of this customisation expert, Bernardo wrote to him: "Hello, fellow countryman: congratulations on your successes! I know you're more into motorbikes, but if you ever come across a DeLorean that could come to Spain, let me know. It's one of the few cars that catches my eye." From here begins the tale that was to have these two men from Velez once again cross paths. It might easily have been a journey through time via the DeLorean, as Quintero and Manen were former high school classmates and, in a way, both have taken similar paths in their sector. Manen moved to the United States to pursue a career as a customiser of motorbikes and Quintero eventually found his niche at US tech giant Google. Shortly after receiving the message, Manen located a DMC-12 owned by an acquaintance of his to begin the restoration. A long and tedious process that finally ended with Quintero's dream car now parked up in his garage.
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