The news spread first through an article on Fox News and then to media outlets around the world. Jason was so excited about the new venture and proud of his wife’s ambition that he made a public pledge on the DNG Motors Instagram account. “UNVEVED SEPTEMBER 13, 2023,” one image read, with white text on a black background and Jason’s caption: “DeLorean is back in the Motor City.” He had just commissioned her to build a car for the Detroit Auto Show build. When Kat saw the post, she freaked out.
Shortly thereafter, the DeLorean Motor Company in Texas sent Kat a cease and desist letter demanding that she no longer use the DeLorean name on her planned car. She and Jason had their attorney send them a response asserting their rights and expressing their willingness to pursue litigation and moved forward.
DeLorean Motor Company sits in a squat building on a tangle of highways in suburban Houston – you drive past some shabby lots and fields, and then the 1980s emerge around a bend in the road, where a retro-looking DMC logo pops up a row of DMC cars looms. 12 in the parking lot. You might even spot a JIGAWAT license plate there. Inside the garage/warehouse, there are a series of disembodied double doors that resemble a flock of injured birds. Old covers of Deloreans Magazines stare out of frames in the exhibition room.
This is the realm of Stephen Wynne, a Liverpool-born mechanic who has dedicated his life to the DeLorean car – to the point of driving his son Cameron to kindergarten in DMC-12, published in Back to the Future. However, Wynne is less impressed with the man, DeLorean. “I have more respect for the team he put together,” he says. “All you hear is John DeLorean and not the team, and I don’t think that’s right.” John was, Wynne said, ahead of his time as an engineer. But: “He founded the company and in the end, you know, killed the company.”
It was Wynne who picked up the pieces and secured a virtual monopoly in the small, strange market for DeLorean parts. This decision wasn’t about preserving someone else’s legacy; it was about securing his own future. “For me, it felt like I was controlling my destiny in the future by being in control of the parts,” he told me in the workshop as tools clattered against the cars behind us. “If anyone was going to get it, I wanted it to be me.” He founded the new DeLorean Motor Company in 1995.
Wynne sees the original 1980s DeLorean buyers as “entrepreneurial, outside-the-box thinkers” with “something different about them” — they were less interested in owning a really fast sports car than in owning a piece of cultural history. (The original DeLorean went from 0 to 60 in about 10.5 seconds, which my used Hyundai can easily beat.) “We think there’s a lot more wealth in this market today,” Wynne says.
Over the years, Wynne and his team made various plans to cater to this “modern nerd” market with new cars built mostly from original parts. But federal regulators were slow to relax regulations requiring these historical replicas to meet current safety standards, so a revival of the DMC-12—without airbags, a third brake light, and antilock brakes—for example—never happened. Nevertheless, the company thrived in parts sales and automobile service. It also made good money from the DeLorean brand, which it alternately licensed for apparel, video games, and the like, or zealously protected through cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits.