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Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction
PunkerTFC writes "I'm sure most of you remember the movie Back To The Future. Well, now you have a chance to own your very own 1982 Delorean, fully equipped for time travel. It has a "Flux Capacitor", "Time Circuits" and "exterior Flux Dispersion Banding". This thing is clearly a chick magnet, and if you can't get them on the first pass, you can always crank it up to 88 mph and go back in time to try it again! Seriously though, this car is amazing, definitely worth a look to see the details. Nothing has been missed, and my hat goes off to the builder."
you can always crank it up to 88 mph
...if you can get it to 88mph. Those things were heavy (1200kg/2700lb) and underpowered (130bhp), and the build quality was pretty poor. And yes, I have seen one in the flesh.
Ydco co
Actually I heard that it didn't sell so well because it had relatively underpowered engine for the market.
He was neither Irish, nor a junkie. He was an American of French decent, and was charged with conspiracy to traffic cocaine, and aquitted due to the cop's obvious attempt to entrap him.
Shame the designer was a junkie ;[
Actually, he wasn't a junkie, he was accused of dealing cocain but was aquitted on all charges because he was entrapped.
IMHO, the real shame is that such a great designer didn't pair up with a great business manager who could make his ideas successful rather than a footnote in automotive history.
Narrative
Driving *America* down the drain? The Delorean was designed and manufactured in Northern Ireland!
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Don't forget that stainless steel won't rust, but stains very easily just by touching it. Also, the doors of the DeLorean did leak, which is particulary bad if you have gullwing doors.
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
Stainless steel doesn't rust, but it will still corrode. It is susceptible to its own special form of decay: crevice corrosion, also known as oxygen starvation. Stainless steel contains significant amounts of chromium, which when exposed to air oxidizes slightly and a thin film of chromium oxide forms, which stops any further oxidation. If exposed to ONLY water, salt or fresh, without the presence of air, this film will not form and stainless steel will corrode, and badly. Salt water is even worse.
Oxygen starvation happens anytime stainless steel is covered, so anywhere it's in constant contact with other materials the chromium oxide can wear off (admittedly it's tougher than rust there) and corrode. Grommet holes, contact points for suspension and plastic resin extras are all places that the deloreans that have until today are corroded.
> Stainless steel body that couldn't rust.
Stainless steel corrodes instead of rusting.
> Light, efficient and well designed midmount engine.
Underpowered unreliable engine
> Gullwing doors.
Doors incompatible with 75% of parking spaces
> Brilliant weighting and suspension that were 10 years ahead of
> what was in anything but supercars...
Go drive one. They wallow like a boat.
I think you're a bit too influenced by the image of the car rather than the reality.
Actually, he wasn't a junkie, he was accused of dealing cocain but was aquitted on all charges because he was entrapped.
This guy is right. John DeLorean got teamed up with someone who he thought was going to fuse a large amount of cash into his company in order to save it (after his original loans by the royal family were spontaneously and unfairly called.) He had no idea that this guys plan was for him to sell coke in order to get the money.
DeLorean attempted to back out, but the man threatened his daughters life. With this in mind, he agreed to go through with the deal. Only at this point did the true facts come out. This gentlman was ACTUALLY a very over zealous cop who did all of this deliberately.
Entrapment.
DeLorean was (very appropriately) acquited of all charges.
Don't forget that stainless steel won't rust, but stains very easily just by touching it.
Like many things made for marketing I think. The name is a lot better than the reality. Titanium is COOL when it's on a blackbird (ok actually the stuff gets really hot) and the correct alloy is used for its purpose as an extreme exotic material. Use it on a Powerbook though and it's really just another metal, which dents easily and needs to be painted otherwise it too marks just by touch. But it still sounds cool.
Like the delorean. Stainless Steel is just COOL marketing wise, but it's a pain in the ass on a car.
Actually, according to the link you provided, it wasn't John Delorean (the CEO) that swindled the money out of the UK, it was Arthur Andersen, the U.S. accounting giant that handled DeLorean accounts.
The Delorean had so many problems with tariffs and shipping and just a mess that many of the 9,000 cars they made sat in parking lots waiting to come to America.
To call John Delorean a thieving bastard is to not understand everything that happened. John DeLorean has stayed out of the limelight. He's been entangled in about 40 legal cases stemming from his company's bankruptcy. He personally declared bankruptcy in September 1999. He was evicted from his house in 2000.
So much for the "thieving bastard".
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
from IMDB, trivia about the Delorean Time Machine:
# The time machine has been through several variations. In the first draft of the screenplay the time machine was a laser device that was housed in a room. At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test. In the third draft of the film the time machine was a DeLorean, but in order to send Marty back to the future the vehicle had to drive the DeLorean into an atomic bomb test.
# The device originally considered for use as the time travel machine was a refrigerator. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he and Steven Spielberg did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside.
# The "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Converter", which is sitting on the DeLorean when Doc returns from the future, is made from (among other things) a Krups coffee grinder.
# The script never called for Marty to repeatedly bang his head on the gull-wing door of the DeLorean; this was improvised during filming as the door mechanism became faulty.
The DeLorean time machine is a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California. While the vanity license plate used in the film says "OUTATIME", the DeLorean's actual license plate reads 3CZV657
When Marty is trying to re-start the DeLorean in 1955 as he prepares to return to 1985, the car's headlights flash the Morse Code for "SOS".
# The DeLorean used in the trilogy is 1981 model with 6-cylinder PRV engine, and the base for the nuclear reactor was made with hubcap from a Dodge Polaris. It is incorrectly quoted as being a 4 cylinder on the 2002 special edition DVD.
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I do hope that's a joke. The stock V6 PRV engine was designed by Peugot, Renault, & Volvo (hence its name, PRV) with an original output of 130bhp. Hardly powerful, and definitely not Chevy-built.
From Delorean Motors UK:
It's a Peugeot Renault Volvo V6 (PRV-6) 2849cc Bosch K-Jet fuel injected SOHC 90 degree V6. It's a US emission-controlled amalgum of the Renault 30 and Volvo B28 engines. It's often mistaken for a Renault engine due to the belts, pulleys, alternator and water pump using the Renault configuration, but the internals are common to the Volvo engine. The transmission is a slightly modified version of the R30's (both 3-speed auto and 5-speed manual). The gears are taller and the transaxle is rotated through 180 degrees for rear-mounting. The PRV-6 has been a popular choice among kit-car enthusiasts for years due to its flexibility and availability. The 3-litre 24 valve version of the PRV-6 was in new production cars up until only a few short years ago, for example in the Citroen Xantia V6 and Renault Espace V6.
Delorean Motors offers upgrades for this engine.
-Julius X
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The DeLorean was a predominately British design, by Lotus and Colin Chapman, though there were other inputs too. The idea was American - DeLorean and Bill Collins, but the details and implementation were British.
More here.
Cheers,
Ian
It's not that rare. You can buy a brand new DeLorean from the DMC. Only runs about 30 grand -- not too bad for a "Rare" car, eh?
-JemDo I have to do everything for you? Click on the "Sales" tab.
"All refurbished cars are "built to order" using only quality, rust-free (while the stainless bodies will never rust, the frames are prone to it, particularly in the Northeastern states) cars, using our years of expertise and our vast supply of original and correct DeLorean parts. By doing it the right way, we can offer a six month, six thousand mile limited warranty on our refurbished cars. It's as close as you can get to a brand new DeLorean, and for about the same price as you'd have paid for one when it was new!"
-JemActually, it's a modified F-350 with a GE jet turbine.
More information
As cool as the DMC-based Time Machine is (and I have to admit, the original B-T-T-F movie is a good memory of my teenage years), the whole BB stuff just rocked. Soooo much more wacked, and so much more fun.
Now, if I can just get Kaneda's Bike from Akira...
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
It says it's automatic transmission, but I distinctly remember in BTTF, Marty changes gears on the run up to the lightning wire.
I sure hope you are not an owner, I am though so...
> Stainless steel corrodes instead of rusting.
Only with certain chemicals
> Doors incompatible with 75% of parking spaces
You try opening up a normal car door with only 11 inches of space on the side of the car. Yes, 11 inches of space.
> Go drive one. They wallow like a boat.
You must have been in one with a poor suspension, mine is nice. Take some turns at high speed that other cars have to slowdown for due to how low it sits.
The builder (an architectural designer) of this replica time machine actually only sold it at a public auction for $22,000. Less than the price of a new refurbished DMC-12. The seller is now trying to sell this car for $35,000.
The frame is badly rusted, and little mechanical work was done to it to ensure its reliability as a driver's car. Not to mention, the electronics were in a large part fabricated by someone without an electronics degree (stainless steel incinerator, anyone?).
As far as movie accuracy, it's very close, but far from perfect. Many details were left out since this car was built to generate income rather than be accurate to the films.
There's actually some legal dispute going on right now between the seller and the builder, being that the seller is using the builder's own photos to promote the item, i.e., copyright infringement.
Most of the comments I've seen so far here about the DeLorean as a car have been pretty misinformed. Stainless does corrode, but only in an environment that lacks oxygen. The chromium forms a protective oxide that protects the carbon steel component from rusting away. Gull-wing doors on it only take about 1 foot of clearance. The engine is heavily based on the Volvo B27 and B28F and was used for many years by them. It has a reliable track record seeing as there are real timing chains, not timing belts, that are used on it, as well as a very accurate, albeit, primitive, mechanical fuel injection.
While the car itself is not necessarily practical, the concepts behind it are. Can you imagine the reduction in paint fumes released into the environment if every car built was stainless steel? Not to mention, when some jerk comes and keys your car, not only will he destroy his key, but with some sandpaper, you yourself can remove the scratch. I'll admit the car has its flaws, but nothing that can't be corrected by someone knowledgeable about DeLoreans.
If you look at the pics the design similarities are quite obvious.
___FutureShoks___
He also designed nearly everything that we drove in the 70s and 80s in Europe. VW Golf, Polo and Scirocco, Fiat Uno, Citroen BX, Fiat Panda, Lotus Esprit, Lancia Delta, SAAB 9000, Audi 80, Alfasud. He practically invented the "folded paper" school of auto design, those that weren't his were copying his.
>> Gullwing doors.
> Doors incompatible with 75% of parking spaces
Actually, this is wrong. The hinges that the doors pivot on are towards the center of the roof, meaning that the doors can actually open in TIGHTER spots than a regular car.
All cars manufactured for sale in the United States during that time, regardless of performance, were legally required to have speedometers that only reach 85MPH and also highlight the speed of 55, which was the national maximum speed limit.
Otherwise I'd quickly agree with you. On the other hand, I think doing something like this would be the main idea behind me ever buying a Delorian anyway.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Doors incompatible with 75% of parking spaces
LOL... Another wannabe who doesn't know a damn thing about DeLoreans. A typical car door requires something like 40 inches of space to fully open. The DeLorean's gullwing doors, hinged near the center of the car, only swing out 11 inches.
Next time try some basic research before opening your mouth.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
It's a 1948 Ford Custom convertible.
Also, this car is an automatic; or at least, the decription says so, from the poor angle the photos provide its impossible to tell. The scene at the beginning of BTTF1 in which Marty is raing away from the Libyans clearly shows the original time machine to have a manual transmission. Oh well.. :/
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
... That and "Back in Time".
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Heh, don't laugh at the delorean's doors.
Open wide
(Taken from a delorean thread on newbeetle.org)
The pictures make it very clear. There are 3 pedals in the car, and the shifter knob is manual.
Unless those pictures are of the "real" one from the movie, then the one up for auction is a manual 5-speed, and someone goofed up the auction listing.
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At some point, he must have realized that what was being discussed were illegal actions and an upstanding person would have backed off then.
This proves exactly how much you don't know about what happened. John did back off. Once he found out drugs were involved, he told the guys - who were undercover FBI agents - "No deal."
Do you know how they responded? They told JZD that if he didn't follow through, they would murder his wife and his children. He didn't know they were FBI agents. He thought they were gangsters, so he cooperated. He even sent letters to his attorney before going to meet with them explaining everything, "in case they kill me." Then he meets them and lo and behold, they're FBI agents.
All of this came out in court. There were statements made by several reputable people that one of the agents in question had bragged about "bringing down someone big... someone like John DeLorean" long before any contact was initially made with him. So our own FBI screws up this guy's life - forever - because someone wants a cheap thrill. And people like you have the gall to come on a public forum 20 years later and spout off about how immoral and awful DeLorean was, without doing any research whatsoever.
He's an innocent man. Always has been.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Any prospective buyers who might be interested on the history of the car being sold:
Should check out the discussion on the car by the original creator
And the creator and his timeline on building the car
In short, its a re-sell and the original creator is getting no credit. In fact the person re-selling the car is using copyrighted images on ebay (which is why the auction was previously pulled).
Um, sorry. Too much nickel in most stainless steels to be magnetic. Don't know what series the DeLorean was made from but it was probably not 400 (ferrous). Does knowing that make me a chick magnet? Please?
My other sig is a Porsche!