I have this friend Dave who loves DeLoreans.
Always has ever since he was a kid. Never had a chance to be in one, even though he’s always around or underneath one classic car or another. I have this other friend Dave. Dave has a DeLorean.
I think you can see where this is going.
So, last weekend, somewhere between Whistler and Pemberton, Dave finally got his chance to drive his dream car. Er, the first Dave, that is. The grin in the resulting photos is so big you’d think the top of his head was going to fall off.
Here’s the weird thing. The DeLorean DMC-12 is not actually a particularly good car. All the elements were there: fabulous gullwing doors, gorgeous Giugiaro styling, handling input from Lotus, rear-engined V-6 power. The V-6, however, isn’t what you’d call a powerplant, and the handling was compromised when the front end of the car was jacked up for bumper regulations (actually, nobody seems to know whether it was bumper regulations that caused the change or something else).
Dave The Second’s DeLorean is about as nice as you’re going to get, with a well-tuned engine and the suspension dropped back down where it’s supposed to be. Even so, we’re talking about a car that would breathe hard trying to keep a first generation Miata in sight. Where dream cars are concerned, however, that doesn’t really matter. I’ve driven Dave II’s DeLorean myself, and the experience mostly boils down to your brain shouting, “I’m in a DeLorean! Great Scott!”
Later in the week, I was privileged to have a go in a different sort of dream car, a Toyota 2000GT. This is a rare beast indeed, and far more valuable than the DMC-12. A rough estimate would be $1.4 million or so, or enough to buy a weevil-infested one floor bungalow on the North Shore. Funny how our hyper-inflationary real estate tends to make the exotics look reasonable.
The 2000GT has even better provenance than the DeLorean, including a cameo as a Bond car in the film You Only Live Twice. That’s the one wear Sean Connery dresses up and pretends to be a Japanese man. “Shayonara.” Not, it has to be said, a particularly realistic movie, but at least there’s a gyrocopter.
As for the 2000GT that appears in the film, that wasn’t just the dream car for someone to hang on their wall, it was the dream of an entire company. If you were Toyota in the 1960s, purveyor of workaday boxy runabouts, the svelte lines of the 2000GT were the future you dreamed. Sure, you produced econoboxes, but one day you might build the finest cars in the world.
Right after I drove the 2000GT (very, very carefully – $1.4M is $1.4M), I was lucky enough to have a go in a Lexus LFA. If the 2000GT was the future Toyota dreamed of, then here it is arrived, screaming all the way. The LFA is not a perfect car in many ways, but if its banshee wail doesn’t raise the goosebumps on your arm, please seek medical attention immediately.
Both the LFA and the 2000GT belong to Christian Chia, president of OpenRoad Auto Group. He’s an interesting mix of affability and perfectionism (he stopped mid-sentence while waxing rhapsodic about the LFA because he spotted a little smudge on a GS-F a customer was about to pick up), and he tells me of a childhood with Countachs and whale-tailed Porsche Turbos plastered on his walls. His nearly-driving-age daughter, he says, dreams of Mercedes G-wagens and Jeep Wranglers.
Some dreams are attainable, and some are not, and some are somewhere in between. The DeLorean, if you’re patient and careful, is absolutely something you could put in your driveway. I will bet you that Dave the first went immediately home and started trawling the auction pages looking for one. He’s got the garage space, if he knocks down a wall or two.
And as for me, my dream car’s sadly out of reach. I’ve loved the Ferrari F40 since I was ten and it showed up in one of the very earliest cockpit-style driving games, Test Drive II. The game, which was programmed in Vancouver, showed a blocky version of the Sea to Sky Highway, and off you dashed in a priceless Ferrari. I have a 1:18 scale model, and a book or two, and a Lego version.
Sadly, the F40 is more along the lines of the 2000GT in terms of value. I’ll never own one outside of a lottery win. Or maybe I could sell my house and try raising a family in one? Wait, no. Even I think that’s a bit silly. The chances of somebody letting me drive one are pretty slim too.
But on the other hand, I know a guy. Name of Fred. He has an F40. You never know.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and automotive enthusiast. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @brendan_mcaleer.
