DeLorean presented the Alpha5 on May 30. Being the fifth Alpha was not a surprise: the company said designers had conceived other vehicles that never got to the production lines for obvious reasons. It even announced it would present them in 90 days to represent what DeLorean could have been if it did not go bankrupt. The Alpha2 and Alpha4 show us the company could have made a Corvette and a pickup truck.
The first Alpha was the DMC-24 project, as we told our readers on May 30. The liftback with massive gullwing doors was supposed to hit mass production right after the DMC-12. Started in 1981, the project did not use stainless steel anymore. DeLorean declared the DMC-24 kept on being developed until 1985, which is strange considering the automaker went bust in December 1982. Mockups even got to wind tunnels to see how the first Alpha would deal with airflow. As you know, it never did.
DeLorean calls the Alpha2 the first complete departure from the legacy design of the DMC-12. If you give it a distracted look, you will wonder which Corvette concept this was. The automaker did not disclose if the vehicle was just conceived by its design team or if it was something a design studio created in 1996 – when it was supposed to be presented. The sketches seem to be recent. Considering it looks like a modern car with a nostalgic design, we’d bet on the first option. The only connections it has with the DMC-12 are the logo and the gullwing doors.
The Alpha3 seems like an evolution of the DMC-24, with the same liftback design. DeLorean said it was supposed to be just a design exercise for an electric sedan, not something for production. Calling it a sedan is probably the same “poetic license” GM took to do the same with the Cadillac Celestiq. It had a back door, which included the rear glass, and the gullwing doors were only for the rear passengers, in an arrangement similar to what the Tesla Model X still offers.
Old design sketches suggest it was created in the 2000s, but DeLorean does not state who imagined the vehicle like that. Curiously, the press images show a different car than that in the early drawings: again, a modern vehicle.
Photo: DeLorean Motor Company
If you remember what the company’s CEO told the guys from Electrify News, it seems DeLorean is speaking about the cars it intends to sell now, not about a representation of a past that never was. At the time, Joost de Vries suggested DeLorean would become a "full-line manufacturer.” A “sedan” and a sports car can be a good starting point, even if an SUV is a must these days. The Alpha4 solves that.
The last concept was supposed to emerge in the 2010s. If we are to consider the sketches and not what DeLorean says, it would be a pickup truck, not the fuel cell SUV that the automaker talked about. The aggressive cabin style would give it a small bed, but the DeLorean pickup truck seemed to target recreational activities other than work.
When we check the press images, we indeed see an SUV: one with cameras instead of rear-view mirrors, which are not even legal in many markets so far. The Alpha4 could be put for sale immediately if it was fully developed and has no 2010s vibes.
Photo: DeLorean Motor Company
Again, DeLorean said the idea was to show the hypothetical progress of the brand if it did not kick the bucket 40 years ago. We’d buy that if the sketches and the press images were the same. The final renderings suggest more than that, possibly the full lineup De Vries was talking about. We’ll confirm that if DeLorean manages to fulfill its plans without the same issues the first attempt had.
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