Back (again) to the future: driving an electric DeLorean

“The electrical components, including motor, battery and control systems, are all from Tesla,” explains Townsend, “provided by a company in Bristol called Zero EV.”

If you’re not well up on DeLoreans, I’ll just remind you that the car was engineered by Lotus and, like an Esprit, features a steel backbone chassis with a glassfibre monocoque attached to it. The DeLorean’s famous stainless steel outer panels are bolted to the glassfibre monocoque.

What’s impressive is how neatly all the Tesla components have fitted. “The electric motor itself is what Tesla refers to as the ‘small drive unit’, and this particular one came from a Model S P70D. It’s actually the front motor,” says Townsend.

He had to fabricate new mounts and various brackets, but it looks like the motor unit was designed for this chassis. The driveshafts are perfectly parallel, for example. Wainman (who’s very much involved in the project) and Townsend have split the Tesla’s batteries and fitted a batch in the rear of the DeLorean and another in the front, although they haven’t managed to fit the entire complement of batteries from the P70D and are missing a couple of cells.

“One of the big challenges has been the cooling for the motor, inverter and other components,” says Townsend. “We’ve fitted a pair of radiators in the car’s nose but getting the right amount of cooling flow has been a matter of trial and error. That’s been the case on a lot of the car, in fact.”

Another example is the wiring. Getting 21st-century electronics to have a dialogue with late ’70s and early ’80s analogue systems is a mighty challenge. Townsend says: “We’ve had to design our own CAN bus [controller area network] to enable everything to work. We’ve also built our own digital instrument panel, but we’re still working on that because it keeps overheating.”

Time for my first ever drive in a DeLorean. The car has been fitted with electric power steering from a Toyota Auris and, according to Townsend, it’s a huge improvement: “We haven’t had a weighing session yet but the original car had an automatic gearbox which, with the 180kg PRV V6, weighed a lot. I won’t be surprised if the electric conversion is no heavier.”

You activate the DeLorean by pressing a red start button, then by moving a lever to select D. The lever is a work of art, and was designed and built by Wainman. He says: “Some people think it’s from a boat; others [including Goodwin] guess that it’s from an aeroplane.”

The DeLorean glides magically away from the kerb. No creaks or rattles. Part of the reason for the original car failing in the showroom was its feeble performance given the asking price. Townsend reckons the project is 80% there and that there’s more performance to come with some software changes. This and the fact that Wainman has spent £200,000 of his own cash on the project prevent me from giving the DeLorean a more thorough foot full of, er, volts.