Alexandre Claudin is a Monster Energy athlete and competitive drifter, previously seen on Netflix's Hyperdrive series. His DeLorean build started life as a standard DMC-12 and has been substantially reworked around a Chevrolet LS V8 installed in the nose in place of the original PRV V6 that sat behind the rear axle in production cars, shared with the Peugeot 604, the Volvo 262C and several other forgettable saloons of the era. The conversion relocates the engine to the nose, rewrites the weight distribution entirely, and makes it properly capable of sustained oversteer rather than merely threatening it.
Earlier this month Claudin brought the car to Belfast for a tour of the city where the DMC-12 was born. The route took in City Hall, the Titanic Museum, and a mural in the city depicting the DeLorean in full Back to the Future specification with flux capacitor attached. The headline stop was in front of the Harland & Wolff dock cranes, Samson and Goliath, where Claudin put the car through its paces and left tyre marks on the ground in view of the most photographed skyline in Northern Ireland.
Like this? Get the app: iOS | Android
The choice of backdrop is not accidental. The Titanic was built in that shipyard. It was the most ambitious industrial project Belfast had ever attempted and it ended at the bottom of the North Atlantic. The DeLorean factory opened in Dunmurry in West Belfast in 1978 on the strength of a deal John Z. DeLorean brokered with the British government, promising thousands of jobs in a city grinding through the worst years of the Troubles. The factory had separate entry gates for Catholic and Protestant workers. It produced around 9,000 cars between 1981 and 1982 before the company collapsed, DeLorean himself was arrested on cocaine trafficking charges, and the whole enterprise was declared a failure.
The film franchise that followed is the reason that failure became a cultural institution. Back to the Future made the DMC-12 the most recognisable car of its generation to people who had never sat in one, because the stainless steel body, the doors that open upward, and the general impression of something that looked like it arrived from somewhere else in time all translated perfectly to the screen. Belfast held onto that. The car is in the Ulster Transport Museum. There is a DeLorean Eurofest scheduled for June at the Stormont buildings and the old factory test track. The city claimed the car long after the company was done with it.
Claudin's V8 version is not a restoration. It is something more honest than that. The original was underpowered, unreliable, and overpriced for what it delivered dynamically. Nobody is pretending otherwise. Dropping a Chevrolet LS into the nose and pointing it at a set of cones is what you do when you want to find out what the shape was always capable of, stripped of the compromises that sank it.
Two of Belfast's most famous exports ended in disaster. One is at the bottom of the ocean. The other is doing donuts outside the cranes that built the ship.
Sources
- CarThrottle — Check Out this Drift-Spec DeLorean Ripping Around its Hometown (sole available source; used per house rules)
- Alexandre Claudin — YouTube channel
- DeLorean Eurofest 2026 — deloreanrevival.com
- Ulster Transport Museum — ireland.com listing
- Ireland Before You Die — The DeLorean Factory, Belfast
