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Lotus USA

World's First Rotary DeLorean

We have been running this vehicle for a year and a half- and about 5000 miles since we built it. There have only been a few changes since then; we finished the air conditioning system and have tested many different fuel pumps.

At first glance it simply looks like a black Delorean. If you've seen the car on the road, you'd realize that this is very far from the truth.  The stock Delorean was armed with a 2.8 Liter foreign engine with about 130HP.  We determined that this was not satisfactory for a car with the looks and handling of the Delorean.  So... we made a few changes…

ENGINE

We've successfully installed a Mazda 3-rotor rotary engine into this car!  Rotary people know this engine as the 20B, it is a 1.962 liter engine with sequential twin turbos.  This engine was originally made for the Mazda Eunos Cosmo, we picked up a model year 1990.  This engine yields about 300HP, and 297ft-lb of torque at 3000RPM.  We have not had the time to weigh the car, though the stock Delorean claimed just over a 2700 pound dry weight.  We guess that the 2.0 liter rotary and the 2.8L PRV V-6 engine weigh about the same.  With this horsepower and low weight, this car really moves!

Transmission
It was determined that using the stock transmission with this engine would not be a very good choice.  Some parties claim that the stock transmission was very reliable and well built, others have told us about transmissions that they ripped in half with 250 and 300 horsepower.  Plus, it only makes sense to get a stronger transmission when you're increasing the stock engine's horsepower by over 230 percent!  For this reason, we bought a Porsche 6-speed manual transmission with Limited Slip Differential.  It came out of a 1995 Porsche 911 Carrera 2.

Digital Dashboard<
We took the dashboard that came with the Eunos Cosmo and stuffed it into the Delorean as well.  The Delorean dashboard is quite dated, and the Cosmo dashboard cluster seemed like a reasonable replacement choice.  The Cosmo dash cluster is partially digital and partially analog.  The trip gauge and odometer are digital, as are the fuel gauge and engine temperature gauge.  The tachometer and speedometer are analog, with a thin red line in front of cool blue dials.  The "180" speedometer is in KPH, not MPH, so really only goes up to 112MPH.  The theoretical top speed of the vehicle is 164MPH.  This was determined using computer programs to calculate aerodynamic, powertrain, and other frictional losses. For the Delorean people: I removed the angle drive and replaced it with a hall effect sensor.  The new dash openly accepted this change…
When the car is off, the dashboard is, obviously, off as well.  We put in a tinted piece of plastic in front of the dashboard, so when the car is off, the dashboard is completely opaque.  We found a radio that does the exact same thing!

                       

We also installed some other buttons and displays that has a clock, average speed-meter (where the ashtray used to be), and other trip meter controls. We also installed a 'start' button, the red button in the picture.


Some videos of the car are available!

Click here to download the low resolution WINDOWS MEDIA video.

Click here to download the high resolution WINDOWS MEDIA video.

Click here to download the low resolution REAL MEDIA video.

If the movie does not load properly, you may have to open your Windows Media player and use the "open URL" option.

Warning: This car is very fast.  Very Stylish.  May attract women.  We brought it to a car show and we didn't even have to ask the models to come stand by it.  Click here to see what I mean....

We brought the vehicle to another show, where it won "Best Exotic".

**Performance update** Zero to 60 has been measured at 4.5 seconds. Quarter mile has not been tested, but is estimated to be about 13 seconds.

This car is **SOLD**

Email Jim.

Here are some links that you might be interested in:

"Elise Products and services since 2002"

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