Delorean saloon plans up at auction

By Tim Pollard

Motor Industry

06 February 2007 02:42

Rare sketches from John Delorean's personal notes have ended up on Ebay - revealing plans for a 1970s 'luxury sedan'.

If the notes are genuine, they include 24 pages of writing and sketches made between October 1976 and December 1976. They're claimed to have come from the corporate records of the Delorean Motor Company, which were seized as a result of bankruptcy in the early 1980s.

They reveal a concept for a luxury car, based around a front-wheel drive Citroen CX chassis. Delorean talked of enlisting the help of Bricklin or Jensen to build the car - anticipated to carry a price tag of around $49,999. Some of the quirkier details include plans for gold, silver and stainless paint finishes, with the possibility of an interior by Gucci.

It just goes to show that Delorean nearly brought us even madder cars than the DMC-12 sports car - the only production car Delorean sired that bore his name and the one that achieved fame in the film Back to the Future.

His automotive career effectively ended when he was arrested for drugs trafficking in 1982, an accusation he successfully defended; he died in 2005.

By Tim Pollard