Update: DeLorean Motors Reimagined Is Relocating, Not Closing

This story has been updated to provide additional clarification based on a conversation Hagerty had with Ben Marquart, Chief Technical Officer of DeLorean Motors Reimagined.

According to a report from the San Antonio Current released earlier this week, DeLorean Motors Reimagined (DMR), the Texas-based company that owns the DeLorean trademark, has shuttered its San Antonio headquarters. Signage at the company’s Port San Antonio building was removed earlier this week and the offices appeared abandoned.

However, in a conversation with Hagerty, Ben Marquart, DMR’s chief technical officer, clarified that the company was not shutting down its headquarters, but simply moving to a new location. The now-defunct space was part of a longer-term agreement between DMR and a group that planned to build a new tower in the San Antonio area aimed to be a hub for all things tech. “[The now-shuttered facility] was just a temporary location, and it was about a two-year or so plan,” explained Marquart. He expanded further, saying that the new location placed DMR more centrally within San Antonio, and closer to the airport.

The initial report from the San Antonio Current noted that the outlet had attempted to call both of the numbers associated with DMR at the time, but that both numbers were disconnected. According to Marquart, those dead numbers were the result of a confluence of moving HQ and shifting phone providers at relatively the same time. “We moved phone provider, and there was an issue with the porting,” he explained. Because of said issue, the company had to abandon the number entirely. “It made it look a lot worse, like a thing that it wasn’t,” he admitted. (As of this update, the number listed on DeLorean Motors Reimagined’s website is still down, but Marquart said that the site would be updated with the new number soon.)

It’s an awkward look considering what’s been going on at DeLorean Motors Reimagined, one of two fledgling companies associated with the DeLorean name. (The other outfit is owned by the daughter of John Z. DeLorean, Kathryn, who is planning to build a car based on the platform of the C8 Corvette.)

Founded in November of 2021, DMR has already weathered legal strife. Texas Public Radio reported in September of 2023 that a lawsuit filed by Karma Automotive against DMR alleged that former employees—including then-CEO Joost de Vries—stole trade secrets during their time at Karma and used them for the benefit of DMR. The lawsuit was settled out of court, according to TPR‘s report. The financial hit may well have been quite substantial for the fledgling firm; since the firm is privately held, we don’t have any way of checking the health of the company’s books.

The company had planned for an initial run of 88 cars (a nod to Back to the Future, the film that immortalized the DMC-12) targeted at collectors, who would put down $2500 or $3000 deposits for an NFT (non-fungible token) hosted on a blockchain owned by a third party, NFT IQ, that would secure their spot on the delivery sheet.

The plans all sounded grand, as they often do for startup automakers, and when DMR announced intentions to relocate to San Antonio, it pledged that the move would create hundreds of high-paying jobs. In return, the local government promised about $1M in tax credits, according to the Current. However, according to another report from the San Antonio Current in October of 2023, the company’s LinkedIn information showed just 18 people on staff.

The failure to make good on hiring promises was one of several concerning developments in recent months at DMR. For one, there had been no updates on vehicle production for quite some time, adding fuel to the fire.

Marquart admits that “the business plan and the strategic product rollout are modified from the original plan, which includes an update to timing.” Updates to both are “imminent” and the first people to hear of them will be reservation holders: “They deserve it, they’re our customers, and we want to give them the first peek.”

Those tax incentives have since dried up—presumably because DMR didn’t hire enough people in time—but DMR has evidently made its peace with the lost savings.

Marquart was candid about the company’s reasoning. “With the refocus of the business plan, part of that was knowing that the funds—budgeted funds from the local governments—were something that we weren’t going to be able to utilize in the immediate future,” he explained. DMR therefore surrendered the incentives. “When we are ready, we can come back to [city officials] and show them an updated plan, what’s been firmed up, what we’ve announced, and what we’re looking for in terms of help.”

Concerns reached new heights on Monday morning as several depositors said on Facebook that they no longer had access to their NFTs. Ken Brackins, who spent $5000 on two build slots, confirmed to the Current on Monday morning that he no longer had access to his tokens. “I’m sure somebody will come up with some kind of class action suit, but I wouldn’t expect to recover anything,” Brackins told the Current in an interview.

After our chat with Marquart, it appears that concerns about access to the NFTs may be short-lived. Marquart explained that DMR is in the process of migrating the NFTs to a hosting platform for the NFTs, and claimed that reservation holders had been notified of the move in a community letter sent out recently.

(Indeed, the owner of the original blockchain, NFT IQ, appears to not exist anymore, according to Google: The company’s Twitter has not posted since October of 2022, back when tech bros the world over were heralding Web3 and NFTs as the next frontier.)

“We do recognize that it has been a challenge; however, we’ve taken all of these issues very, very seriously. The rollout has taken a bit longer than we had expected, but that’s because we’re not going to have this problem again. It was more important for us to get [the relaunch of the blockchain market and the NFT reservations] right than it was to rush it and have issues again.”

We’ll have to sit tight and wait to hear about the particulars of this re-focused timeline and strategy that now guides DeLorean Motors Reimagined.

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