thats actually quite a good point Stuart.
I think last year there was something about the DVLA 'knowing of' around
130 cars in GB - for NI you'd need to ask DVLNI - but if we assumed there
were around 20-30 cars over there, would that be accurate?
Then you have to find out how many are registered in all the other countries,
we know there are healthy populations of DeLoreans in Eire, Belgium, Holland
and Germany, but there are also cars in France, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Italy, etc etc. There could be 500-1000 cars in Europe.
And what about cars in Africa? Middle East? Far East? South East Asia?
Indian Sub-Continent? The Russian Federation? Who knows? another 100 cars perhaps?
We know also that a few have made their way to Australia/New Zealand - at a guesstimate, maybe
another 50-100 cars?
So, that could account for around 1500 DeLorean's that aren't in the USA/Canada/South America.
Soooo..... if they built circa 9000, and 1500 aren't in the USA, then there's 7500 in the America's,
less any that have bitten the dust over the last 30 years - assuming 500-1000 have been
crashed/stolen/burned out/wrecked by film companies/broken for parts by vendors, then maybe
there could be closer to 7-8000 cars left worldwide.
However, no one is totally sure how many were built, there always used to be the 8583 figure banded
about, but then at DMCH in 2003, I remember James Espey saying they had bodies with 9200 build
numbers, so who really knows the true figure.
Short of doing a 'worldwide DeLorean Census', I don't think we'll ever truly know how many cars have
survived in one form or another.
Interesting topic though!