- The Tesla Cybertruck is made of stainless steel.
- Nobody has made a stainless-steel vehicle since DeLorean in the early 1980s.
- There's are some interesting similarities between both vehicles and John DeLorean and Elon Musk.
- But the Cybertruck and the DeLorean are also quite different.
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The Tesla Cybertruck is the first stainless-steel vehicle since the ill-fated DeLorean — here's a closer look at both (TSLA)
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
The DMC DeLorean was, the context of the auto industry of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a stunner. Nothing else looked like it — the dashing coupé was defined by its gull-wing doors and its stainless-steel skin.
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With the exception of a few one-off promotional cars, the auto industry has never used stainless steel to manufacture vehicles.
With two notable exceptions: the DMC DeLorean, made from 1981-1983; and the newly unveiled Tesla Cybertruck , which could go into production in 2022.
A stainless gulf of numerous decades separates these vehicles, raising the question of why undeniably durable stainless hasn't displaced good-old-fashioned regular steel.
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For DeLorean, the stainless proposition was that scratches could be easily buffed out, but of course the car's shimmering skin was marketing.
For Tesla, marketing is also a factor, although the company's sibling, SpaceX, has been developing new stainless applications for its spacecraft.
As a practical matter, no automakers use stainless to build cars these days, so there's no supply chain on any magnitude.
While the CyberTruck and the DeLorean have one big thing in common, they also have some little things. But in other ways, they're utterly different.
Here's a rundown:
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