When one thinks of John Delorean’s stainless steel, gull wing sports coupe, the car is usually overshadowed by a colorful back-story which includes a blockbuster movie franchise, a maniacal former GM hotshot, and very public cocaine bust. To make matters worse, the car was under powered and half baked when it debuted 30 years ago. The good news is a healthy dose of horsepower can cure a myriad of ills and that’s what Matt Farah from Tuned found out after a trip to DMC California to check the world’s fastest hot rod DeLorean.

Located in Garden Grove, DMC California is owned by Don Steger, the only certified DeLorean mechanic left in the country. Farah pays him a visit and gets a brush up on the state of the DeLorean car hobby.

The shop is packed with every conceivable part for the Gugario styled DMC-12. Outside, customers cars spill on to the street creating the biggest collection of DeLoreans you’ll ever see this side of a fan boy car show.

After a tour of the shop, Farah gets some seat time in one of Steger’s customers cars that’s had its anemic 130 HP 2.8 liter alloy V-6 swapped out for 575 HP twin turbo 3.8 liter V6 from a Buick Grand National.  Sadly, the car had been sitting for awhile and had gummed up fuel lines and eventually gave up the ghost and had to be flat bedded back to the shop.

For now the DeLorean is back at Steger’s facility and hopefully will be returned to its fire breathing self.  Perhaps we’ll revisit down the road and verify if the gullwing coupe can light ’em up…