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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."
In the end, things die because they are ahead of their time. It's human nature, I think. We as a whole are not made for revolutionary steps, just small evolutionary ones.
I would say "Welcome to the post-modern time", but it is supposed to be over.
Agreed. I enjoy the Back to the Future movies as much as the next guy, but Delorean modding is getting disturbingly popular -- especially the BTTF mods.
What car is it that Biff is driving in 1955? I seem to remember being told it was a Ford '48 Ragtop, but can't remember...
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I have one with all the original body panels and not one spot of corrosion at all....the panels look factory new still. How long does this take since the car is well over 20+ years old....40, 50, 60, 100 years? If so then I think I can live with that. And yes I do keep my car covered and yes I have removed the panels as part of a restoration project and no corrosion at all on the underside where it is in contact with the resin body.
It was an utter pile of shit, by all accounts. Basically, they built a show car with no regard for how to make it suitable for production, and got Lotus in to make a proper car out of it. Colin Chapman took one look at it and said "right, we'll basically have to start all over again", and it was a total rush job with nowhere near enough money spent on it. It was never meant to be made out of stainless steel, so it's slower and therefore heavier than it was meant to be. The perfect illustration of what a balls-up it was is the windows on the gullwing doors - it didn't occur to anybody until very late on that the windows couldn't actually be opened because of the door design, so they had to cut out those little windows-within-windows you can see if you look at the photos on the auction page.
Yes, they are what are referred to as "receivers". The .gov.uk had to sue them to get their JZDeLorean money back. Which they didn't manage to do.
Sorry but it's GIGANTIC compared to the mint 1988 fiero GT I have in my garage. and even a 300lb man can sit comfortably in a fiero... I know, my uncle who is QUITE large drove it off the assembly line for me in 1988 and handed me the keys. It is one of the last 100 made.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
True, it does state automatic, however, in the pictures you can see it is a manual, and looking at the production info on dmcnews.com, that vin number is marked as a manual.
However, that car lacks the grooved hood (need a 1981 model for that), and the metal plate where the window switches are is improper for the car (suppose to be 5 switches across, 2 are dummies, with the cigarette lighter located elsewhere).
Buttons on the steering wheel is also improper.
I'll stop glancing at photos and nit-picking. i know I could find more.
I understood they choose 88 because it looks a lot like BB. BB=Buckaroo Banzi, the first movie they made. BTTF had a lot of Banzi references, including the Flux Capicator standing in for BB's Oscolation Overthruster and Christopher Lloyd.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Here is the fun part, if you watch the first movie, you'll notice the tail pipes are missing. It also has an odd sound when it starts up, as if something electrical turned on. It was suppose to have a nuclear engine in it.
They then did the 3rd movie, and needed a way to have the car break down, so the combustion engine came back.
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.
That's right. I used to have a DeLorean (rare, 1983 model, note the fuel fill door on the hood) and still have a driver's side gull wing door kicking around my garage. Lemme tell you, they're already a pain in the ass to work on - the engine is in the back and there are the little "sail windows" which give it the rough profile of a hatchback when it isn't. I can't imagine how it is to try to get at the motor with all the BTTF props on it!
Anyway, I read a lot about DeLorean. Here's the problem. DeLorean was a former Pontiac executive, and one of the creators of the Pontiac GTO.
Angered with GM, he wrote a scathing book, "On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors" in which he detailed how the first Chevy Vega tore itself in half after only 8 miles on the test track.
(The Vega and its twin the Pontiac (dis)Astre, was the predecessor to the Chevette, produced from 1971-1977, and is probably the single worst car ever made by Detroit - still not so bad compared to lots of early Japanese and Eastern European cars, though... Renault Beep-Beep Dauphine!)
DeLorean decided to make his own personal luxury car, the ethical luxury car. Stainless steel body that would never rust, best of the best materials (yeah, as a former DeLorean owner, tell me how to fix dents in the stainless steel!). By the time he'd arranged for the production (factory in Ireland for the tax breaks), it was 1981.
When the Guigaro (same styling house that did most VW, Hyundai, Audi) styled the DeLorean, it was the mid-1970s. Such a simple rectangular, clean car was unheard of.
In 1978 Ford introduced the Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr, also the restyled "Fox-body" Mustang. GM introduced the super-square Impala about this time - all of these are things that we associate with 1980s cars, versus the rounded and skirted shapes of 1970s cars. All of a sudden, the DeLorean's simple clean angular body wasn't so cutting-edge.
In 1981, inflation was rampant, and the economy was doing poorly. Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy. When you factor in inflation, gasoline was more expensive then than it is now. People were not in the mood to buy luxury cars; people were buying Chevettes and Ford Escorts and Plymouth Reliants. DeLorean's nascent car company launched at the wrong time.
By 1983, he was running out of money. The cars were already looking dated as the simple early 1980s angular shape was giving way to the "Aerobird" shapes of the new 1984 Thunderbird, Cougar and Tempo, all premiering in the 1983 car show circuit. There was no money to restyle and retool, and DeLorean started to look for other ways of keeping the company afloat, at least for a little while.
The car had been produced with massive subsidies from the (North/South - can't remember which) Irish government. When the company finally folded (with a little over 2,000 DeLorean DMC-12 sports cars produced), the government destroyed all the stamping dies and tooling to ensure that no more DeLoreans would ever be made.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
John Delorean did have his scrapes with the law.
He went to school at Lawrence Tech, where my ex just happened to have gone and shared with me stories that have been passed down about the man.
One such story is that he typed up letters claiming to be from the power company, saying that the company had underpaid by $5 and to remit payment to a PO Box.
He sent these letters to a number of companies -- the PO box being his own personal box.
He was tried for it and levied a fine... ironically the fine was LESS than the money he made from the whole scam.
So I'm not saying the man was guilty of everything accused, but he definitely was not a total angel.
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