DeLorean Motor Company to Enter Airspeeder International Series as US Constructor, Racing From November 2026
Why It MattersA heritage car brand taking the constructor seat shows flying-car racing moving toward a national-team format in which brand identity and university engineering ties, more than crewed flight, set early competitive positioning.
What happened
DeLorean Motor Company announced on October 13, 2026, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco that it will enter the Airspeeder International Series, the electric flying-car racing championship, as constructor of the United States team. The team will compete as the DeLorean Airspeeder Team and will make its race debut when the 2026–27 season opens in November 2026. DeLorean describes itself as the first American constructor in flying-car racing, lining up against national teams from other countries in the series' first international season. Airspeeder's teams page also lists Team Australia and Forza Team Italia.
In the debut season, the team will race the Airspeeder Mk3C, the aircraft supplied by the series, with DeLorean leading its design identity. The constructor role is to expand from there: the DeLorean Airspeeder for the 2027–28 season is to be designed in collaboration with student engineering teams at U.S. universities, including UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech. The aircraft design, pilot line-up and sporting program will be revealed ahead of the season opener, and the pilots have not yet been named.
Airspeeder races electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in three dimensions through electronically defined courses rather than around a conventional circuit. The series' own materials describe its racing as "remote today"; its first competition, the EXA series launched in 2021, used teams of two remote pilots. Airspeeder said in September 2025 that Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority granted its Mk4 an experimental flight certificate, which it called a first for a racing eVTOL, but no date has been published for crewed racing.
DeLorean Chief Brand Officer Cameron Wynne said the company has always stood for the courage to imagine transportation differently. Airspeeder founder and CEO Matt Pearson called DeLorean the original flying-car brand and said an American icon joining the grid in the first international season shows where the sport is heading.
Industry impact & what to watch
Racing series in emerging aircraft categories tend to recruit recognisable names before the hardware is differentiated, and this entry follows that logic. With every team flying the same series-supplied Mk3C in the first season, DeLorean's contribution is design identity and brand reach, not a distinct airframe. Competitive separation between constructors only becomes possible once teams build their own aircraft, which for DeLorean is planned for the 2027–28 season.
The university collaboration points to how such a programme can be staffed. Student engineering teams at institutions such as UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech give a brand-led constructor design capacity without a large in-house engineering organisation, while also tying the series to a talent pipeline for the wider eVTOL sector. That is a structural feature of the sport's model as much as a one-off partnership.
The next checkpoints are concrete: the design, pilot line-up and sporting program are all due to be revealed before the November season opener. How the series' remote-piloted racing evolves toward crewed competition remains tied to certification progress, and no date for it has been published.
