General > General Technical Chat
DeLorean DMC-12 w/ 1200 miles
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 04, 2020, 03:42:57 am ---The bar is low for performance. The engine was something like 150HP and stainless is heavy. In a race between a DeLorean and a Prius I'm honestly not sure what I'd put my money on. The DeLorean looks amazing though so it definitely has that going for it.
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It was certainly on the low side for a car branded as a "sports car", but not that awful either. Weight was ~1200 kg, which was a bit heavy at the time, but by today's standard, it's almost "light". A typical Prius IV is actually heavier than this, with lower max. power. Of course, mileage has just nothing to do between the two, with the Prius being at least 5 times less hungry or even less.
boffin:
--- Quote from: edy on March 02, 2020, 08:30:18 pm ---
There are however a number of other cars out there that are worth quite a bit more today. A quick search at movie cars shows the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am Firebird (used in "Smokey and the Bandit" movie) was about $5,500 in 1977 dollars, which makes it around $23,000 in 2020 dollars. Good luck finding any that cheap today... they are well above that value and for an actual muscle-car that could do the business.
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LOL !
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early W72 cars came with the standard 180 hp air cleaner. Pontiac offered the T/A 400 cu in (6.6 L) with a single 4-barrel Rochester Quadrajet carburetor RPO W72 rated at 200 bhp (203 PS; 149 kW) at 3600 rpm and a maximum torque of 325 lb⋅ft (441 N⋅m) at 2400 rpm, as opposed to the regular 6.6 Litre 400 (RPO L78) rated at 180 hp (134 kW).
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200hp in a car that weighed two tons. That's not a sports car; the power to weight ratio is similar to that of a '71 Datsun 510 (just over 1 ton, 96hp). Of course in a race the Transam would be hampered by the poor handling, and the Datsun with a fully independent suspension would run rings around it.
TheSteve:
It was also sad that back in 81 they couldn't have the speedo go past 85 MPH - how Marty got it up to 88 we'll never know...
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: TheSteve on March 04, 2020, 07:11:13 pm ---It was also sad that back in 81 they couldn't have the speedo go past 85 MPH - how Marty got it up to 88 we'll never know...
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I didnt know that about the speedo, but the car itself had an effective max speed of ~200 km/h (about 125 mph), so reaching 88 was definitely no big deal. And for the fun story, IIRC the DMC that was used in Back to the future had custom instruments anyway.
james_s:
That brief law always makes me laugh. I remember reading a few years ago that the woman who created the law still believes it saved lives. I have a hard time believing that anyone is going to believe that their car won't go faster than the speedometer. When we were young and invincible my friend had a car with a 85 mph speedo and we would bury the needle and see how long it took to come down off the peg. If anything it encouraged speeding.
Regarding performance, I looked and in the US the DeLorean was only 130HP. 0-60 tested at around 10.5 seconds with a manual so it was slower than a non-intercooled Volvo turbo wagon of the same era.
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