I bought a DeLorean last week. Here's what I'm going to do to "ruin it".

[Wayne 962]

Okay, bought a DeLorean. It's a very different and cool looking car. Drives, well, let's say *not* like a 911. We'll leave it at that - needs better shocks, brakes and maybe some other suspension tuning.

The plan is to convert it to an EV. Tesla Model 3 980 performance package motor. Should be zero-to-sixty in about 4.2 seconds or so. Very fast. The original engine was anemic at best, so this seems like a worthy effort. They also made almost 9,000 of these too - so they are not exactly unique or rare. Cool, but not terribly rare.

They all look exactly the same. Here's mine:



Here was the inspiration for buying it - I'm going to wrap it in metallic chrome copper (keeping with the EV theme):



I think that's really, really cool. This is an AI image I found on the Internet - I had ChatGPT draw me a few different angles based upon this initial image.








Very cool. But I'm also not a huge fan of the original wheels. I thought about blacking out some of the spokes like this:



Which is an improvement, I think, but not too much. Someone is making 16" and 17" wheels for it (to replace the original 14/15" wheels) but it's in the same design, and looks a bit dated to me.

[Wayne 962]

So, I found this on the Internet:



which someone had photoshopped. Finding something like this for the headlamps has been a bit of a challenge, but I did finally find them for a Peterbilt truck!



Trying to mix everything together, I think the final product will look a bit like this (the copper color is too orange on this particular image). I also think I would need to make some slight modifications to the headlamps.



There you go. Kindof going to be unusual?

-Wayne

[KFC911]

LOL .... needs a Cooper pic in due time ... nice!

[masraum]

This is a very cool project, Wayne!

There was a shop in Houston years ago that I think exclusively worked on Deloreans. I remember driving past it a couple of times over the years and there were always ~half a dozen visible. I also worked with a guy that had a Delorean, but I don't think I even saw him drive it to work. They were relatively cool looking cars. It was a shame that the anemic motor seemed to be one of the bigger hindrances of them catching on. If you can get it working with the Tesla motor, that'll be pretty cool!

This seems like the perfect sort of marriage.

[speeder]

I don’t think that you are ruining it at all, they were cool in a quirky way but never a performance car even by 1982 standards. It’s a great idea and the wrap is also good on this. Not always a fan of wraps but this one looks great.

Are you going to swap all of the Tesla electronics into it as well, like the touchscreen and HVAC, etc? That would make it a great car. It needs really good working A/C if you will die in that thing. Good luck! 👍

[aschen]

Living the dream

If ever there was a car appropriate for an EV swap..........

[gregpark]

That's cool and going to be fast but I recommend you keep it under 88mph

[masraum]

Originally Posted by gregpark

That's cool and going to be fast but I recommend you keep it under 88mph

We were all thinking it...

[herr_oberst]

This would be the perfect project to collaborate on with Superfast Matt. He did a Tesla into vintage Jag conversion a few years back, using all kinds of cool engineering tricks like 3D scanning and a pipeline to send-cut-send. (I think he might be ex-Tesla, too, like maybe as in an engineer?)

I absolutely love the copper foil wrap. Genius. Maybe paint the front bumper black so it looks like a coppertop battery. Okay, don't do that on second thought.
I'm looking forward to seeing updates on this. The best thing that could ever happen to a DeLorean.

[GH85Carrera]

It should be a fun new toy.

[rwest]

What’s weird is if it was almost any other sports type car I would be thinking “big mistake or blasphemy”, but Deloreans have such crap motors compared to their looks, that I’m 100% on board and can’t wait to see how it turns out.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by aschen

Living the dream

If ever there was a car appropriate for an EV swap..........

Exactly my thought. Plus from a performance perspective you are substantially improving it. Fun project!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by rwest

What’s weird is if it was almost any other sports type car I would be thinking “big mistake or blasphemy”, but Deloreans have such crap motors compared to their looks, that I’m 100% on board and can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Exactly. Changing pretty much anything other than the appearance of a Delorean seems like it could only be an improvement to the original with no real loss due to "loss of soul or character."

[Brillo]

Originally Posted by aschen

If ever there was a car appropriate for an EV swap..........

Yup!

[stevej37]

Just be sure to keep the Flux Capacitor.

[Arizona_928]

Has anyone copper plated a whole body?

[Wayne 962]

Odd, a bunch of the photos didn't post. Here you go:

[Wayne 962]

Here's the Cooper pics! He wasn't too sure about what was going on with the door!

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Here's the mods that we're going to be doing to it. The orange is a bit too dark in the second photo. The first photo I found on the Internet - someone had photoshopped this.

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Here are the headlamps I was talking about. Some minor modifications would be needed to make it super cool - maybe black out the top parts. We'll have to see. I ordered a set last night - $700! Hope they look / fit okay...

-Wayne