I have a couple of questions about the Gold DeLorean's

[MrSmith]

I have a couple of questions,
wondering if anyone might know the answers? thanks

What sort of gold was used in the production of the American Express Gold DeLorean's?

How much gold was actually used in weight?

More of a piece of trivia I guess,
I was just curious about the scrap value of the gold as I was watching a documentary where they were talking to some original DMC factory workers who talked about the high security around the gold panels. They also mentioned how they called the room where they were assembled the "gold crib" with 24 security guards etc..
The factory workers had to remove all jewellery and wear special clothing without buttons, in case they scratched the special gold panels.

[Dangermouse]

24ct gold leaf. I don't recall the amount, but it is noted in Nick's book if you have a copy.

[rdarlington]

24ct gold leaf. I don't recall the amount, but it is noted in Nick's book if you have a copy.

So double check my math here, but a (very) conservative estimate is under $4500 worth of gold leaf based on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Leaf-Booklet-sheets-Transfer/dp/B005H7VS2A

And dimensions found here:
http://www.dmcnews.com/faq/t_dims.htm

I treated the car as a rectangular box so the surface area will be significantly less than this:
(39.3*166)+(39.3*73.1)+(73.1*166.0) = 21531.23 square inches or 149.522 square feet of surface area.

Dividing 149.522 by the 1.69542 square feet of gold leaf in the book from Amazon I get 51 books total. At that price it works out to be $4497.78 rounded up, but with free shipping.

Let's be even more conservative and assume you mess up on half, or lose half. We're still under $9k at today's prices for gold in retail packaging.

-Bob

[MrSmith]

thanks guys, really interesting, its not a huge amount of gold but I guess a lot of the $80,000 asking price was in the special hand assembly of these cars and the uniqueness, bling of them.

[Dangermouse]

I'd like to retract my previous answer.

It was 24ct gold plating rather than gold leaf, so probably much thinner and therefore less gold. Though I am not an expert. Nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[vwdmc16]

Right the plating was only one or two Mil thick, regular car paint jobs are 6-13mil thick (one mil is about as thick as a piece of cellophane plastic. I recall it was actually less than a single oz of gold.

In 1981 the price of gold was just $400-$600/oz. So the price was the labor and exclusivity, I imagine if the UAE/ Dubai was as rich as is is today, They would have sold alot more than 2.

[NightFlyer]

Nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Say it isn't so! :eek5:

[rdarlington]

Plating is extremely easy on stainless steel, and quite fast. You could do the whole car in a couple hours without breaking a sweat.

It's even easier if you do it in a plating bath, but then you'd be using quite a bit more gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkB9OT2XVvA <--- somehow I don't want to be like this guy.

-Bob

[john 05141]

I wrote a detailed article about the gold Deloreans just last issue of the Delorean club from Holland. (Sorry Dutch language)
So I did a long research about the gold Deloreans and it is a very interesting search.

A total of 0.8Kg has been used to coat 3 sets of panels. One door has been coated 3 times because a scratch was discovered over again.
The inside of the panels and the inside of the doors were coated in wax to prevent gold sticking over there.
When a third door "scatch free" was flown in (private plane, the coating in Germany was done in a hurry during the weekend with a limited number of workers, and the job had to be done before the general workforce returned)
So the last door was not wax coated inside due to lack of time and the complete door inside and out was coated. There are no records to be found which car has that door.
But the coating was very thin. One gentle blend and it would be all gone.

Indeed there was a room dedicated to be used to install the gold panel doors. The windows were taped and there was 24h security watching. Indeed the people working on the cars had special clothing, no watches ort rings allowed.These 2 cars were pulled from the assembly lines after they were completed, panels and doors taken off and lthe car left to wait to get their clothing back. (the 3rd set was a spare in case one needed replacements in case of a accident)
Both cars got the saddle brown interior. The third gold Delorean with the black interior was assembled by Consolidated by using the third spare set after Delorean went belly up. They used a black interio Delorean for this. They were missing a door, so one door was coated in gold afterwards but with a visible difference in color.

A 4th delorean was made in gold coating too, but one owner saw the gold Deloreans when they came out and wanted his D in gold too. So the panels were removed and the panels were made to gold using a brush to apply the gold powder very thin. (cost him 8K then) That is the Delorean that was destined to go to Canada, but he was unable to get the car thru customs (go figure) The car is now in the New Jersey / New York are but no record who has it. The car was for sale for 150K$ but no buyers.

A 5th Delorean is a look-a like and is the one from Deloman in Germany. He used a gold colored clearcoat and it looks damn good. No no real gold BUT he did use the original spare saddle brown set that he managed to buy at some time, so its interior is certanly original.

Jan

[Elvis]

Mistake - the Snider Texas car is inside black !

Cool thing - the panels were done in Schwabisch Gmünd, where Romy lives - THE Delorean Girl in Germany :-D

There was a pretty good article from a German fellow who talked to people who did the gold stuff back then.
I'll try to find it later.

[rdarlington]

A total of 0.8Kg has been used to coat 3 sets of panels.

That's nearly 2lbs of gold (1.76lbs)! Must've been a very thick coat.

-Bob

[Rich W]

Another little known fact ... there are several "test" gold plated stainless steel panels that were done prior to the "production" 3 sets of panels.

Locations of all the test panels are not known, but there is at least one test panel that has undergone "environmental" testing for over 30 years.

[vwdmc16]

...


A 5th Delorean is a look-a like and is the one from Deloman in Germany. He used a gold colored clearcoat and it looks damn good. No no real gold ....
Jan



Actually his site states that he did get small items plated with 24kt, the headlight bezels, lug nuts, exhaust tips...

[john 05141]

That is correct! The alloys and facia'swere painted (no wrap)
I think he has been experimenting with a wrap at first.

I have seen the prototype (sat in it actiully) the pilot cars (sat in that one too) the D-Rex (did not sit in that one) The real BTTF Delorean in DCS (no one was allowed to sit in that one) the mirror polished D, Limo D, 2 engines D, The Carson, D, the Sammy Davis Jr. D, the 4 seaterD,... a lot of famous Dleoreans
But the gold Deloreans are still on my bucket list. I'd like to see one of them for real one day. (Bucket list??)

Jan

[nick sutton]

Right the plating was only one or two Mil thick, regular car paint jobs are 6-13mil thick (one mil is about as thick as a piece of cellophane plastic. I recall it was actually less than a single oz of gold.

In 1981 the price of gold was just $400-$600/oz. So the price was the labor and exclusivity, I imagine if the UAE/ Dubai was as rich as is is today, They would have sold alot more than 2.

The thickness of the 24 carat gold plating on the DeLorean stainless panels was recorded by Stuart Craven from purchasing at DMCL (who managed the plating process in Germany) was 2.5 microns. The total amount of gold on the main panels is recorded as 860 grams per car. The smaller parts, exhaust tips etcetera, were plated in Coventry England also using 24 carat gold.
A few years after the closure of DMCL an independent test house recorded (details with DeLorean Texas) that a sample taken from one of these cars was shown to be 99.9% gold.
Nick

[rdarlington]

The thickness of the 24 carat gold plating on the DeLorean stainless panels was recorded by Stuart Craven from purchasing at DMCL (who managed the plating process in Germany) was 2.5 microns. The total amount of gold on the main panels is recorded as 860 grams per car. The smaller parts, exhaust tips etcetera, were plated in Coventry England also using 24 carat gold.
A few years after the closure of DMCL an independent test house recorded (details with DeLorean Texas) that a sample taken from one of these cars was shown to be 99.9% gold.
Nick

This is believable. At 2.5 micron thickness, that's a 2.075 foot x 2.075 foot area (roughly 4 square feet) per cubic centimeter (19.3 grams) of gold.

This is easily 20x thicker than your average gold leaf coating. 860 grams would spread out to 13 ft x 13 ft, roughly, at 2.5 micron thickness. This 2.5 micron plating is also 5 or 6x thicker than a usual gold plating. This thickness is known as "heavy gold plate" for a reason.

-Bob