For Christmas 1981, A DeLorean/American Express promotion planned to sell one hundred 24k gold-plated DMC-12s for $85,000 each to its gold card members, but only two were sold. One of these was purchased by Roger Mize, president of Snyder National Bank in Snyder, Texas. VIN #4301 sat in the bank lobby for over 20 years before being loaned to the Petersen Automotive Museum of Los Angeles. It has a black interior, and an automatic transmission.[28]

The second gold-plated American Express DMC-12 is located at the William F. Harrah Foundation/National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. This car, VIN #4300, is the only one of the three existing gold-plated examples to be equipped with a manual transmission. This car has a tan interior. Like its golden siblings, it is a low-mileage vehicle with only 1,442 miles (2,307 km) on the odometer.[29]