I am willing to be corrected but my understanding was the DeLorean bodywork was unpainted but made of stainless steel which would not rust.
Some disliked the look and painted their cars and the paint can flake off leaving the car looking scruffy. Also the chassis, engine and suspension are mild steel and will rust.
TCMF-2L
You’re correct. I was under a time crunch for the edit window and wrote poorly. The car had frame rust issues and the stainless steel exterior was seen as “unfinished”, looked gray rather than silver under most lighting conditions and was prone to scratches ruining the finish. However the panels themselves weren’t rust prone.
In any event, Marty’s statement wasn’t intended to be a laugh line because the car was so awesome; it was a laugh line because the car was widely seen as a failure and a goofy option. Had the car been a KITT-style Trans Am, it wouldn’t have worked.
Mini Cooper after The Bourne Identity.
I remember a line from one episode where Starsky says about some car, “It doesn’t corner like the Torino.” Even at 13 years old, I laughed outloud at that howler. Of course it doesn’t. It’s a boat! A pickup would corner better than that Torino!
Doesn’t mean I don’t have the model kit of it. I love that they made the red light for the roof as part of the kit.
What about Caddy’s? They had a reputation for being geezer cars driven by men in white shoes but then the hip hop generation started rapping about them.
Quiet Riot was rap?
I don’t know if they had been “uncool” but Twister gave a huge boost to Dodge trucks; red ones in particular.
“That '70s Show” did the same for GM Skywagons (i.e.: Oldsmobile Vista Cruisers and Buick Sportwagons).
Ha! After thinking about the Aztek in Breaking Bad, I kind of wondered if its spinoff would make the Suzuki Esteem cool.
Huh? Even the Who and the Rolling Stones sing about Cadillacs in the 70s. Not to mention “Cadillac Ranch” predates hip hop by a decade.
And don’t forget Hiot Rod Lincoln (Cadillac sedan passed up by) or even the lowly “Beep Beep”, but that caddy did get bested by a Rambler, in second gear…
What do you think Aretha was driving on the Freeway of Love?
Well yeah, in the 1950s and 60s and probably still in the 70s, Cadillacs were cool. I don’t think it was until the 1980s and 90s that they got the reputation of being an old geezer’s car. And then old Caddies were used cars you could buy relatively cheap and turn into lowriders…
Actually, did that song make Ramblers kind of cool?
In the movie, “Romeo Must Die”, starring Jet Li and Aaliyah, one of the characters (played by Anthony Anderson) had a big, yellow Hummer. Interest in Hummers seemed to really take off following that movie.
Cadillacs were always THE American luxury car. It’s just that luxury cars were either not “cool” for younger people, or they weren’t attainable for somewhat older people who might have liked them.
I mean, as a kid in the 1970s and 1980s, they were always considered nice, but we were all about the Corvettes, Camaros, Trans Ams, and to a much lesser extent, Mustangs. Or we liked the 4WD pickups and off-road vehicles like Jeeps.
At the time, the DeLorean was actually seen as a cool car. I remember going to a trendy bar in the summer of 1982, and they had a DeLorean showcased in an unreachable area – you could ;look,. but not touch. I certainly thought it was great, with its brushed-metal appearance, and wondered why more cars weren’t made with stainless steel panels (I was living in upstate New York sat the time, and was fighting a constant battle with rust on my car’s panels).
The DeLorean wasn’t seen as a “loser” because of the car itself, but because of John Delorean’s Fall from Grace in 1982 when he got arrested for cocaine trafficking.
This is from the Wikipedia page on the car:
So it seems as if the DeLorean was a car seen as “cool” at first (with those gull-wing doors and stainless steel body), but later became “uncool”. The movie may have helped its status, but I see that some downrated it even after the movie
Of course when manufacturers give cars to the press to review, they basically cherry pick the creme of the crop. So any build quality issues likely wouldn’t have been evident when the car magazines tested it. That’s why Consumer Reports buys their test cars from regular dealerships instead of relying on press cars provided by the manufacturers. And I kind of wonder if the recent, harsher reviews might be judging the Delorean by modern standards. As I understand it, the main complaint was that it was underpowered, and it probably was. But what was considered fast in the 1980s and what’s considered fast today are two very different standards.
I suspect, admittedly without much evidence, that maybe the Delorean might be considered uncool by car guys who care about horsepower and 0-60 times and stuff like that. But for collectors who just want an iconic and distinctive car that will turn heads when they take it for a drive, it is cool, and the Back to the Future movies surely gave it a boost in that department.
It was a failure well before DeLorean’s October 1982 arrest. From the article you quoted:
Despite this, instead of reducing production, John DeLorean doubled production output, further adding to the backlog of unsold cars. By the end of 1981, DMC had produced 7,500 cars but had only sold 3,000. By this point, DMC was in a financial hardship having only sold 350 units in January 1982[29] and in February 1982, DMC was placed into receivership.
It continues on talking about how, in February 1982, DMC was begging dealers to order cars and everyone just ignored them. Eight months before DeLorean’s cocaine arrest, DMC was already collapsed from poor sales.
Just because a lot of people don’t buy expensive new cars as fast as you need them to doesn’t mean the cars are bad or uncool. new cars are going to be a gamble, and they’ll be expensive and not sell well. Teslas ain’t cheap and Tuckers failed, but they’re now collector’s items (and widely hailed). DeLorean’s problem was a business and financial failing, not a problem with bad cars.
Even the Aztek managed to sell nearly 30,000 in its initial two-year sales period 
I’ll leave it at that though. I think the DeLorean very well qualifies for the thread; you’re welcome to come up with reasons why you think it doesn’t. Again, the entire joke is premised on the car itself being a loser. A car widely considered as cool (sales be damned) wouldn’t work.
I had always understood that by the 1980s younger people who could afford them tended to buy Mercedes and BMWs instead of Cadillacs.
