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Certain gadgets spring to mind when we think about badly designed products and failed launches. But none failed in quite such a costly manner as the De Lorean DMC-12. Back in the early 1970s, when the original plans for the De Lorean were made public, it quickly became the “Big boy’s toy” on every male shopping list. Like all good gadgets it contained a large chunk of new technology and some good old fashioned cosmetic appeal.

Unfortunately for the business man behind this infamous motor vehicle, John De Lorean, many of the new forms of technology that were originally intended to make it into the production vehicle were just not ready. Certain things such as the radical chassis design, which was to be built using a new form of manufacturing process named Elastic Reservoir Moulding (ERM). The patent for ERM was bought by the De Lorean Motor Company at great expense, only for engineers to finally report that the technology was useless for motor vehicle manufacture, and scrapping the entire design concept. Slowly, little by little all of the exciting new features that could have made the car the ultimate male gadget of the late 70s were replaced by run of the mill standard technology. Possibly the only radical design feature that remained in the final production model was the use of a stainless steel skin over a fibreglass panel for the body panelling. This interesting feature kind of backfired as owners of the few De Lorean that were actually made, found out quite quickly that stainless steel was something of a pain to keep clean and maintain.

Most of us remember Doc Brown of Back to the Future fame, and his amazing time travelling De Lorean (possibly the greatest gadget ever) replete with flux capacitor and a dashboard full of esoteric lights. Interestingly enough, all of the four cars that were used in the filming of the original movies had their standard PRV-V6 (Renault produced) power plant ripped out and a more powerful Porsche engine installed. This should give some idea of just how bad the performance was in the original vehicle, if you need to stick a bigger engine into a sports car just to get it up to 88 miles per hour quick enough to keep movie goers entertained, then something must surely be wrong?

The De Lorean did make it into production, although the retail price had risen dramatically from original expectations. The DMC-12 took its name from the fact it was designed to retail at $12,000, but actually went on sale at $25,000 which represented over 100% slip in pricing from concept to launch. Only around 9,000 cars were ever built before the De Lorean Motor Company went bust in 1982, following the arrest of its founder on drug trafficking charges (later disproved). What could have been one of the most innovative and technically exciting motor vehicles of all time became a legend in bad business management and silly ideas.

I remember as a teenager, going to visit an Uncle of mine who had recently retired. He spent an afternoon demonstrating his new gadget too me, a portable video recorder. This thing was huge; it consisted of a camera (fairly large by modern standards) and a portable video recorder and TV tuner, about the size of a briefcase. Sure it was portable, but it was not useful in my eyes, as it was just not convenient.

Several years passed, and things started to get smaller, in 1982 two new technologies were released that paved the way for current hand held camcorders to evolve. Sony introduced the Betacam, the first really portable camcorder (well OK it was still big but it was a single unit), and JVC released the VHS-C format, these were smaller sized VHC style tapes, which were used in camcorders to record video and then slotted into an adapter cartridge to be played on a standard VHS video recorder. The public was awake, and it took the concept of a portable video recording device to heart, the ball as they say, was in motion.

If a single gadget had to be given as an example of design and innovation driven by the consumer, then surely the camcorder is a good choice. The market loved the idea of portable video recording, but they wanted it smaller, easier, more reliable, and it was quite obvious they were willing to pay for it. A second major breakthrough came with the advent of digital technology, the old and antiquated storage methods were consigned to the scrap heap, recording tapes disappeared and digital storage took its place. More reliable, faster, cheaper and able to store far more than a video tape, it was quickly accepted as the best solution available. Digital storage took many forms from small hard disk drives to writable DVD, and was a major milestone in the camcorder lifecycle.

Since the acceptance of digital storage as the preferred recording medium for camcorders, most development has concentrated on making things smaller, the idea of the handcam was forming in many minds, Sony stated that after the movie Back to the Future was released, which featured a scene of the main character using a handcam to record an experiment, the amount of written and email queries they had, questioning plans of releasing smaller camcorders was huge.

Modern camcorders are often a hybrid unit, consisting of a full motion video camera, a still shot camera and a suite of video or picture editing software built into the device, allowing users to take movies and video, and then edit it into a single production, dunning video and adding subtitles, without eve moving the recording from the camcorder. Almost all current camcorder models have the facility of being linked directly to a TV so that recordings can be viewed directly from the device.