Put this story in the “Strange Bedfellows” department, but word has it that a resurrected DeLorean Motor Company is considering keeping the Pontiac Solstice alive and bringing it back to market by 2011. No, seriously. I’m not sure if this is either one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve heard for a while, or one of the daffiest; like the Titanic rescuing a drowning man.
The DeLorean Motor Company still exists. A lot of people don’t know this, but yeah, it’s still out there, and not in name only. Based in Texas, DMC is still building “new” DMC-12s, just like the ones you could by in 1982, just like the ones that Doc Brown modified in Back To The Future. Essentially what the current DeLorean Motor Company did was get all of the leftover parts that Johnny Z had stacked up and ready to go for series production, and, in addition to providing those parts to current owners as needed, assembles them into “new” DeLoreans.
On the other side of this coin, we have the Pontiac Solstice. Everyone knows that Pontiac as a brand is dead (sniff), and that although there was talk of the Solstice continuing on in some form, it’s also dead as well.
So what we have, set up-wise, is DeLorean Motor Company as a make without a car and the Pontiac Solstice is a car without a make. Could the two combine forces, and could the new DMC somehow save and continue to build the Solstice?
James Espey, Vice President of the DeLorean Motor Company, has this to say: “JZD [John DeLorean] always said that the best memories of his automotive career were at Pontiac, and that connection between JZD and Pontiac is probably one of the better known associations among car enthusiasts.”
Hmmmm … that sounds like a definite maybe, doesn’t it?
Now add this to the fire: DeLorean Motor Company put out the drawings you see here and has gone so far as to obtain a Pontiac Solstice GXP Coupe for test and evaluation. And on top of that, the new DMC says they’re energized at the possibility of “putting several hundred people back to work” at the Wilmington plant where the Solstice is made, and currently sits idle.
Sure, this is very, very much in the “candy and nuts” stage, but stranger things have happened. Hell, people are still making DeLoreans.
Source: Jalopnik
