Dear dml, The DeLorean was designed as a safety car, and is one of the world's safest automobiles. It was intended for the Mercedes Benz, Acura, Infiniti, Lexus, & Jaguar crowd. These particular machines have a panache for style and grace, however they have an extremely safe and well made. The DeLorean was 15 years ahead of the level that it took Lexus/Toyota, Infiniti/Nissan, and Acura/Honda to attain in terms of perceived value, status, and quality. The educated consumer knew that these automobiles were some of the finest examples of quality and safety. This is true with the DeLorean as well. In my opinion the automotive press was way too concerned with drag strip performance and unrealistic comparison to the corvette. The DeLorean had evolved too far ahead of the 78-82 corvette in terms of a buyer wanting a more luxurious and prestigious automobile, but this is another story. In addition, Allstate Insurance Inc. contributed to the research and development of the Elastic Reservoir Molding (ERM) process for the DeLorean. However the technology to develop ERM was a substantial cost to DMC so Lotus changed DeLorean's mind about using it in a production automobile. The Variable Assisted Resin Injection (VARI) process used in the Lotus Esprit outerbody and DeLorean underbody, incorporate stiffening areas filled with beams of foam. The foam used is extremely hard to crush and provides excellent protection via front, side, and rear impact. Additionally, The United States Federal Government contracted AMF and Fairchild to build the experimental US safety car, and it had gullwing doors. John DeLorean touted the gullwings in the DeLorean automobile much safer than a conventional car because the higher door sill protected the driver in a side impact collision. Keep in mind that until the late 1990s automobile manufactures offered side impact collision airbags as standard features. So it is "safe" to say that the DeLorean is a very safe car. There are two films that I was able to locate from NHTSA about 5 years ago. The films show the production DeLorean in a closing barrier impact speed of 35 and 40 mph. The car did well considering the impact speed was 70 and 80 mph. (35x2 = 70, 40x2 =80mph) The problem area was the fuel pump boot. The pump broke free from the boot, spilling small amounts of fuel into the passenger compartment. This was NHTSA only viable complaint. Michael