Let’s be honest. The DeLorean DMC-12 is one of the greatest letdowns in history. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great and has a rear-engine layout and retro-futuristic vibes to earn it serious cool points. All of which are stripped away by its absolutely dismal performance. That scene in Back To The Futurewhere they need to hit 88 mph is a real nail-biter because these cars basically need the runway from Fast 6 to make it happen. Yeah. It really is that bad.The killer aesthetics of the DeLorean have captured the imagination of many gearheads, though. Enough to make them wonder what would happen if you slammed a much more powerful engine into one. That includes the HotCars team. We put our HotCars engine swap calculator to the test to see what the DeLorean would do with a better powerplant. But because John DeLorean was constantly at odds with GM, we wanted to give him the tools he’d need to stick it to the Corvette in the meanest way possible; we decided to find out what a DeLorean would be like with Mustang GTD guts. The DeLorean GTD Engine Swap We Didn't Know We Needed Mecum The DeLorean DMC-12 has a lot of flaws. Most of which we won’t get into here. What we’re primarily concerned with is the sheer lack of power these things have to offer. The engine of choice is a rear-mounted PRV 2.85-liter V6 that made the DeLorean the kind of car you might stand a chance of outrunning with a city bus.FordLet’s get into the hard numbers. The DeLorean was rated to produce a whopping 130 horsepower and 153 lb-ft of torque. It yawned from 0 to 60 mph in 9.5 seconds, and would clear the quarter-mile in 17 seconds with a trap speed of 81 mph. Swapping out that lazy little V6 for pretty much any modern engine would yield some great improvements. The engine out of a Mustang GTD totally transforms it into a legit time machine. DMC DeLorean GTD Swap HotCars The heart of the mighty Mustang GTD engine is the magnificent Predator 5.2-liter supercharged V8. This evolutionary successor of the already ferocious Coyote makes 815 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque. Even if the Ford engine weighs 155 lbs more than the old one, the gains in power more than offset the difference.As for the numbers you want to see, this theoretical swap would make the DeLorean a flat-out supercar. The 0 to 60 mph time is cut in half to 4.75 seconds. The original 17-second quarter-mile time drops to a certifiably fast 10.29 seconds at a speed of 146 mph. With a horsepower-to-weight ratio of 3.53 horsepower per pound or 567 horsepower per ton, the DeLorean now has some serious potential. The GTD-Powered DMC-12 Hits 88 MPH Without A Hitch FordA 10-second quarter-mile time is stupid-fast, especially for a car that started out with a 17-second slip. That’s not to say there’s not a lot left on the table. If you punch the same stats into another quarter-mile calculator, you’ll find there’s room to make this GTD DeLorean even quicker. A 2900-pound car with this much horsepower can theoretically achieve a 9-second pass.As with our LT7-swapped Cobalt, the tires are a major limiter. The tool is factoring in a considerable traction loss on account of it using performance summer tires rather than slicks, whereas other tools factor in only ideal conditions. In other words, wheel spins a bit of an issue. That being said, tires would absolutely be a major concern for a real-world version of this car, and moving to slicks and tuning the suspension would ring even more out of this already absurd GTD-Powered DeLorean. How To Make This Impossible Engine Swap Happen? Bring a TrailerNow for the cold shower. Dropping a Predator V8 into a DMC DeLorean isn’t going to happen overnight. There’s a lot that would go into making it actually work properly. It’s a job that would absolutely require masterful fabrication skills and a whole lot of money. Using the Ford powerplant for a rear-engine configuration may even call on some hardware from a GT, opening a whole new can of worms.That’s not to say it’s impossible, though. There are plenty of engine-swapped DeLoreans out there in the world, some of which are flat-out radical. I’ve personally encountered one with a Ferrari V12 in it that actually ran and drove. Give it enough time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone actually put at least a Coyote in a DeLorean. The DeLorean We Deserve Mecum I get it. There are purists out there arguing that Coyote swapping a DeLorean would be total blasphemy. They’re right, too. These are pretty rare cars that are worth preserving to an extent. However, gearheads really do deserve faster versions of these machines. They look like missiles that absolutely fail to meet expectations, especially coming from the legend of a man who brought us the GTO.What’s your take? Let us know how you feel about a GTD-swapped DeLorean and drop a comment about any other wild swaps you’d be curious to learn more about.