Upon watching a recent episode of the BBC’s Top Gear programme, reviewing the original DeLorean, made me reflect on how tricky the process of new product development can be, and the fact that not always the inventors original aim physically comes out the factory door.
The DeLorean was made famous by the film Back to the Future as a modified time machine. But in reality the original 1980s manufactured vehicle, was far removed from John DeLorean’s original vision. When it was first invented back in the early 1980s, it was originally designed to compete with other sports cars on the market at that time, but the manufactured car differed greatly to the original prototype.
The production of the 1980s design suffered with scheduling pressures as numerous revised parts were fitted to the vehicle. For example, the V6 engine was swapped for a ‘reliable’ non sports version. Other replacement parts included brakes from a Ford Cortina, door locks from an Austin Allegro, the glove box originated from a Volkswagen, and the gear knob from a Renault. All of these changes meant a lot of re-engineering and a return to the drawing board for the engineers and designers alike at that time.
The moral of this blog is that in reality it might not always be a cost effective decision to produce a product exactly as an original concept was designed and within demanding time restraints. Indeed my mechanical design engineering business, Sanstec Design, has been involved with many products when it has taken numerous tweaks to get the balance right before hitting the manufacturing button and travelling back to the future.
