You remember the DeLorean? That slick, gull-winged beauty from Back to the Future that made every kid in the eighties dream of hitting 88 miles per hour and landing in 1955. Well, hold onto your flux capacitors, because the DeLorean Motor Company has just gone and done something properly mad. They're taking the fight to the sky.
The announcement came fresh out of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where the company revealed it will be entering the Airspeeder International Series. That's right, the world's first racing series for electric flying cars. And DeLorean isn't just dipping a toe in. They're coming in as a full-blown constructor for the United States Airspeeder Team, which will race under the banner of the DeLorean Airspeeder Team. Their debut? The 2026–27 season opener in November.
Now, for anyone who's ever sat through a family braai and heard Uncle Trevor bang on about how "they don't make cars like they used to," this one's for you. DeLorean has always been a bit of a legend. It's not just the car, it's the story.
John DeLorean was a maverick who wanted to build something different, something bold. The DMC-12 rolled off the line in Northern Ireland in the early eighties, all stainless steel and sharp angles. It wasn't the fastest thing on four wheels, but it didn't need to be. It had presence. And then Robert Zemeckis put it in a time machine, and the rest is history. Forty years later, we still picture a DeLorean leaving the road behind.
Well, the folks at Airspeeder have been thinking the same thing. They reckon electric flying cars should be developed the way the automobile was, through the pressure and spectacle of racing. Makes sense, doesn't it? You don't learn to build a proper race car by sitting in a boardroom. You learn by chucking it around a track and seeing what breaks.
Cameron Wynne, the Chief Brand Officer at DeLorean, put it simply. "People have pictured a DeLorean in the sky for 40 years," he said. "We decided it was time to stop picturing it." Fair enough.
Matt Pearson, the founder and CEO of Airspeeder, was equally chuffed. He called DeLorean "the original flying car brand," pointing out that long before anyone actually built one, the whole world already knew what a flying DeLorean looked like. And now, in the series' first international season, an American icon will be lining up on the grid. That's a proper statement of intent.
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So what does it actually mean to be a constructor in this game? Well, it's not like Formula One where you're going around a circuit. These national teams race electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, through electronically defined courses in three dimensions. Think less "lap time" and more "did that thing just barrel-roll through a virtual gate?" For their debut season, the team will race the Airspeeder Mk3C, with DeLorean leading its design identity. But the real fun starts in 2027–28, when the DeLorean Airspeeder will be designed in collaboration with student engineering teams from universities across the States, including UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech. That's bringing good old American ingenuity into the mix.
Wynne explained why this matters. "Motorsport has always been where mobility brands prove themselves," he said. "Competition compresses development cycles." In other words, you learn fast or you crash. And it's not just about going fast. DeLorean wants to help figure out the regulatory and safety frameworks that'll be needed before flying cars become a normal thing. It's a long road, but someone's got to drive it. Or fly it.
For DeLorean, this is a chance to be at the front of advanced air mobility. It's a live proving ground, happening right as electric flight moves from prototype to actual product. And it gives a whole new generation of fans a reason to care about the name again. Not just because of a movie from 1985, but because of what's happening right now.
The race programme is just the first chapter. DeLorean and Airspeeder have promised more news in the coming months about where this constructor relationship is heading, both on and off the grid. So keep your eyes on the skies, mense. The future just got a whole lot more interesting.
Colin Windell for Colin-on-Cars in association with
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