The DeLorean Motor Company is pushing ahead with its plans to revive the iconic car and has released new details about what improvements will be made to the new edition ahead of production starting in April or May 2017.

The hugely popular 1980s sci-fi film franchise Back to the Future featured the DMC-12, a stainless steel sports car with gull wing doors, as Doc Brown's indispensable time machine, thus assuring that the car would become one of the most memorable of the 20<sup>th century.

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However, the car didn't sell well with consumers, leading to the DeLorean Motor Company going into receivership in 1982 and the its factory in Northern Ireland being seized by the UK government.

But fans of the films loved the car so much that in 1995, a Liverpool-born mechanic called Stephen Wynne decided to start a new company called the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) in Texas to primarily refurbish the old DM-12 cars with new parts so that it could be driven again.

Today, many of these cars are now in private collections or owned by film memorabilia companies that exhibit the DeLorean at comic conventions as fan experiences.

New DMC-12 will be twice as powerful and full of new tech

DeLorean DMC-12
Famous for its vertical doors and role in Back To The Future, the DeLorean has a cult following Creative Commons / ilikewaffles11

DMC plans to make a new version of the DMC-12, which was originally invented by John DeLorean, and while the cars will look similar to the 1980s editions, they will feature modern car technologies.

DMC vice president James Espey told Michigan newspaper MLive that the new DeLorean will have an engine that will be twice as powerful as the original 138-horsepower Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6 and the car will also be much lighter, even though from the outside, the car will look virtually the same as its famous predecessor.

The engine must fulfil low emissions certification requirements but the only engine that currently would work is by General Motors and is too big to fit into the DMC-12, so DMC is in consultation with at least three other unnamed manufacturers that are trying to get their engines certified so that they will be suitable.

DeLorean Motor Company
The DeLorean Motor Company in Texas plans to build 50 DMC-12 cars a year, outfitted with new engines, wheels, suspension and in-car entertainment DMC

As it is no longer possible to get performance tyres in the 14in and 15in sizes that the original DMC-12 used, the car will instead have 17in and 18in wheels, which will also make it easier for better brakes to be incorporated into the car design.

DMC also wants to improve the car's electrical system and chassis, as well as outfitting the automobile with state of the art technology for in-car entertainment, high-end instrument clusters and other luxury features like seats that can be heated or cooled.

DeLorean could make its debut outside the US first

DeLorean
The DMC-12 has become one of the most recognisable cars in history thanks to being featured in the Back to the Future film franchise Universal Pictures

Espey said that DMC has confirmed most of its suppliers but is still waiting for US federal regulators to push through new legislation that makes it possible for small companies to build up to 325 replicas a year of cars that were first released over 25 years ago.

The final regulations of the Low Volume Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015 still need to be put in place by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration by December, but it is possible that the regulations might be delayed.

If this happens, DMC will still export the new cars to foreign markets, but there won't be that many of them to sell. The firm intends to make only one car a month during the first year of production, which will be gradually scaled up to one automobile a week.

DMC only wants to build a maximum of 50 cars per year, and although the price hasn't yet been released, it is likely to be in the $100,000 (£69,000) range.