DeLorean DMC-12 | Futurepedia | Fandom powered by Wikia History Note: The following section is considered non-canon or is disputed in canonicity. In 1984 , Doctor Emmett Brown purchased a used DeLorean that was advertised in the Hill Valley Telegraph . Later that year, Douglas J. Needles insulted Marty McFly because he didn't have a car, which embarrassed him as he was afraid that Jennifer would reject him over someone who had their own vehicle. After deciding against stealing Doc's DeLorean DMC-12 to try to impress Jennifer, he took Doc's advice and asked her out. They then went on a date to see a Clint Eastwood film. Non-canon or disputable information ends here. Doc Brown used the DeLorean he purchased to create his DeLorean time machine in 1985 . Behind the scenes A De Lorean DMC-12 with the gull-wing doors closed. In October 1976 , the first prototype DeLorean DMC-12 was completed by William T. Collins, chief engineer and designer (formerly chief engineer at Pontiac).

Originally, the car's rear-mounted power plant was to be a Citroën Wankel rotary engine, but was replaced with a French-designed and produced PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo) fuel injected V-6 because of the poor fuel economy of the rotary engine, an important issue at a time of world-wide fuel shortages. Collins and DeLorean envisioned a chassis produced from a new and untested manufacturing technology known as Elastic Reservoir Moulding (ERM), which would contribute to the light-weight characteristics of the car while presumably lowering its production costs. This new technology, for which DeLorean had purchased patent rights, would eventually be found to be unsuitable for mass production. These and other changes to the original concept led to considerable schedule pressures. The entire car was deemed to require almost complete re-engineering, which was turned over to engineer Colin Chapman, founder and owner of Lotus. Chapman replaced most of the unproven material and manufacturing techniques with those currently being employed by Lotus. The backbone chassis is very similar to the Lotus Esprit. The original Giorgetto Giugiaro body design was left mostly intact, as were the distinctive stainless steel outer skin panels and gull-wing doors.

The DMC-12 would eventually be built in a factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, a neighborhood a few miles from Belfast city center. Construction on the factory began in October 1978 , and although production of the DMC-12 was scheduled to start in 1979 , engineering issues and budget overruns delayed production until early 1981. By that time, the unemployment rate was high in Northern Ireland and local residents lined up to apply for jobs at the factory. The production personnel were largely inexperienced, but were paid premium wages and supplied with the best equipment available. Most quality issues were solved by 1982 and the cars were sold from dealers with a 12 month, 12,000 mi (19,300 km) warranty and an available five-year, 50,000-mile (80,000 km) service contract. The De Lorean Motor Company went bankrupt in late 1982 following John DeLorean 's arrest in October of that year on drug trafficking charges. He was later found not guilty, but it was too late for the DMC-12.

Approximately 100 partially assembled DMC's on the production line were completed by Consolidated International (now known as Big Lots). The remaining parts from the factory stock, the parts from the US Warranty Parts Center, as well as parts from the original suppliers that had not yet been delivered to the factory were all shipped to Columbus, Ohio in 1983–1984. A company called KAPAC sold these parts to retail and wholesale customers via mail order. In 1997 , De Lorean Motor Company of Texas acquired this inventory. [2] A total of about 9,200 DMC-12s were produced between January 1981 and December 1982. [3] Almost a fifth of these were produced in October 1981. About 1,000 1982 models were produced between February and May 1982, and all of these cars had the VIN's changed after purchase by Consolidated International to make them appear as 1983 models.

There are the 15XXX, 16XXX, and 17XXX VINs which were originally 10XXX, 11XXX and 12XXX VINs. Right-hand drive DeLoreans Despite being produced in Northern Ireland, DMC-12s were primarily intended for the American market. Therefore, all initial production models were left-hand drive (designed to be driven on the right side of the road), limiting its popularity in the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, where traffic travels on the left. Only 23 right-hand drive factory licensed DeLoreans were ever produced; these cars were converted from left-hand drive models by Wooler Hodec, in Andover, United Kingdom. Three main-factory authorized batches of right-hand-drive cars were made: The first batch of cars, with a black interior and manual gearbox, were very early prototypes for evaluating the changes necessary for RHD. The build quality and under-bodies were of very variable quality and several of these cars were scrapped. The cars with VINs 510, 752, 758 still survive. The second batch had grey interiors.

All were registered and used by the factory in Northern Ireland, with registration numbers (license plates), AXI 1697, AXI 1698, AXI 1699. The three survivors (VINs 5565, 5592 and 5638) are quite different from all of the other RHD cars. These cars all had "Euro-spec" rear lights, roof mounted radio aerials, very small side-indicator repeaters, no rear-wing side markers, white forward-facing door lights, fog-light switch, and twin brake servos (with one mounted in the engine bay, where the carbon canister normally lives). No catalytic converters or Lambda equipment were fitted as British legislation did not require them. These were essentially further working test vehicles; the car with the registration number AXI 1697 was allocated to Don Lander, the Managing Director, and was (at one time) turbo charged. AXI 1699 was said to be for John De Lorean's personal use whilst in Northern Ireland.

The final batch all had a black interior and manual transmission, with one exception, having the VIN numbers: 12171–12181 & 12199 and registration numbers "SIJ". The only black-interior automatic, VIN 12175, is owned by the Editor of a UK De Lorean owners' club . There were two further manual cars—with grey interior—which were custom made for VIPs in the UK; these had the VINs 11382 and 16242. Of the 20 right-hand drive cars listed above, three had automatic gearboxes and the remainder were manual. Another distinction of these models is that they were not affected by US legislation of the time and thus had speedometers reading to 140 mph, instead of the US-specification 85 mph. The car's top speed was clearly closer to 140 mph (225 km/h) than 85 mph (137 km/h). Construction The DMC-12 features a number of unusual construction details, including gull-wing doors, unpainted stainless-steel body panels, and a mid-mounted engine.

Body The body design of the DMC-12 was a product of Giorgetto Giugiaro of Ital Design and is expressed in brushed SS304 stainless steel. Except for three cars plated in 24-karat gold, all DMC-12's left the factory uncovered by paint or clearcoat. [4] Painted De Loreans do exist, although these were all painted after the cars were purchased from the factory. To train workers, several hundred DMCs were produced without stainless panels, and are referred to as "black cars" or "mules", in reference to their black fiberglass panels in lieu of stainless, though these were never marketed. Small scratches in the stainless steel body panels can be removed with a non-metallic scouring pad (since metal pads can leave iron particles embedded in the stainless steel which can give the appearance of the stainless "rusting"), or even sandpaper. [5] The stainless steel panels are fixed to a glass-reinforced plastic (GRP, fiberglass) monocoque underbody. The underbody is affixed to a double-Y frame chassis, derived from the Lotus Esprit platform. The unpainted stainless body creates challenges during restoration of the cars.

In traditional automotive body repair, the panel is repaired to be as original ("straight") as possible and imperfections are sculpted back to form with body filler like Bondo or lead (body solder). This poses no problem (aside from originality) with most cars, as the filler will be hidden by the car's paint (for example, most new cars have filler hiding the seam where the roof meets the quarter panel ). With an unpainted stainless body, the stainless steel must be reworked to exactly the original shape, contour and grain - which is a tremendously difficult job on regular steel (a dented or bent panel is stretched and a shrinking hammer or other techniques must be used to unstretch the metal. Furthermore, it is exceedingly difficult to paint stainless steel due to adhesion issues. De Lorean envisioned that damaged panels would simply be replaced rather than repaired; each De Lorean service center today has at least one experienced body repair person on staff, and there are decades worth of new stainless panels still available in most instances. Another novel feature of the DMC-12 is its gull-wing doors.

The common problem of supporting the weight of gull-wing doors was solved by other manufacturers with lightweight doors in the Mercedes-Benz 300SL and an air pump in the Bricklin SV-1, although these designs had structural or convenience issues. The DMC-12 features heavy doors supported by cryogenically preset torsion bars and gas-charged struts . [6] These torsion bars were developed by Grumman Aerospace (and built by Unbrako in the UK, a division of SPS Technologies of Jenkintown, PA) to withstand the stresses of supporting the doors. [7] A popular misconception of the DMC-12's gull-wing doors is that they require far more side clearance to open relative to ordinary side-hinge doors, such as when parked in a parking lot. In fact, the opposite is true: the DMC-12 requires far less clearance than side-hinge doors, and this can be physically demonstrated. This misconception of side clearance may stem from a misunderstood location of the hinge point of the doors by persons unfamiliar with DMC-12s.

These doors, when opening, only require 11 inches (264 mm) clearance outside the line of the car, making opening and closing the doors in crowded parking lots relatively easy. Much like the doors fitted to the Lamborghini Countach, the DMC-12 doors featured small cutout windows, because full-sized windows would not be fully retractable within the short door panels. [8] [9] Suspension The underbody and suspension of the DMC-12 were based largely on the Lotus Esprit, with a four-wheel independent suspension, coil springs, and telescopic shock absorbers. The front suspension used double wishbones, while the rear was a multi-link setup. In its original development stages, the car is said to have handled quite well. Considering that Lotus's reputation was built largely on the handling prowess of the cars the company produced, the DMC-12's smooth ride wasn't a surprise. Unfortunately, changing U.S. government bumper height regulations required modifications to the suspension system and an increase in the vehicle's factory ride height, both of which had adverse effects on the car's handling capabilities. Many owners have subsequently replaced or modified the front springs to return the front height to the original design specification.

Steering was rack and pinion, with an overall steering ratio of 14.9:1, giving 2.65 turns lock-to-lock and a 35 ft (10.67 m) turning circle. DMC-12s were originally fitted with cast alloy wheels, measuring 14 in (356 mm) in diameter by 6 in (152 mm) wide on the front and 15 in (381 mm) in diameter by 8 in (203 mm) wide on the rear. These were fitted with Goodyear NCT steel-belted radial tires; because the engine is mounted in the very rear of the vehicle, the DMC-12 has a 35%/65% front/rear weight distribution. [10] The DMC-12 features power-assisted disc brakes on all wheels, with 10 in (254 mm) rotors front and 10.5 in (267 mm) rear. Performance The grey interior and manual transmission in a DMC-12.

John De Lorean had originally envisioned that the car would produce somewhere around 200 horsepower, but eventually settled on a 170 horsepower output for the engine. However, US emissions regulations required that parts such as catalytic converters be added to the vehicle before it could be sold in that country. Although the new parts qualified the vehicle for sale in the US, they caused serious reductions to power output, to 130 horsepower. The 40-horsepower loss seriously impeded the DMC-12's performance, and when combined with the forced changes to the vehicle's suspension system, the US versions were regarded as disappointing. De Lorean's comparison literature noted that the DMC-12 could achieve 0–60 mph (0–96 km/h) in 8.8 s, which would have been good for the time, but Road & Track magazine clocked the car at 10.5 s. However, it's possible that the factory performance numbers were achieved using a European-spec car with the 170 horsepower engine.

[11] Pricing New DMC-12s had a suggested retail price of $25,000 ($650 more when equipped with an automatic transmission); this is equivalent to approximately $62,300 in 2007 dollars [1] . Originally, the car was simply named the DMC-12 because it was to sell for $12,000, but manufacturing costs blew this figure up to the price of $25,000 and the primary name for the car became the DeLorean. There were extensive waiting lists of people willing to pay up to $10,000 above the list price; however, after the collapse of the De Lorean Motor Company, unsold cars could be purchased for under the retail price. [12] The DMC-12 was only available with two factory options including a no-cost manual transmission or automatic transmission ($650) and the choice of a grey or black interior.

Several dealer options were available, including a car cover ($117); floor mats ($84); black textured accent stripes ($87); grey scotch-cal accent stripes ($55); a luggage rack ($269) and a ski-rack adapter. The standard feature list included stainless steel body panels; gull-wing doors with cryogenically-treated torsion bars; leather seats/trim; air conditioning; an AM/FM cassette stereo system; power windows, locks and mirrors; a tilt and telescopic steering wheel; tinted glass; body side mouldings; windshield wipers; and an electric rear window defogger. [13] [14] Prices for DMC-12s vary widely and are dependent upon supply and demand. As of early 2007, a De Lorean in good to excellent condition can be had for around $20,000 to $29,000. Mint-condition cars can fetch up to $50,000. There are an estimated 6,500 surviving DMC-12s today. Some of the larger parts carry a steep price tag, such as the fiberglass underbody.

Most parts are reasonably priced and readily available. Production changes Although there were no typical "yearly" updates to the De Lorean, several changes were made to the De Lorean during production. John De Lorean believed that model years were primarily a gimmick used by automobile companies to sell more cars. Instead of making massive changes at the end of the model year, he implemented changes mid-production. This resulted in no clear distinction between the 1981, 1982, and 1983 model years, but with subtle changes taking place almost continuously throughout the life of the De Lorean. The most visible of these changes related to the hood style. Hood styles The original hood of the De Lorean had grooves running down both sides. It included a gas flap to simplify fuel filling. The gas flap was built so that the trunk could be added to the total cargo area of the De Lorean. These cars typically had a locking gas cap to prevent siphoning. In 1981, the hood flap was removed from the hood of the cars (although the hood creases stayed). This style was retained well into 1982.

Based on production numbers for all three years, this hood style is probably the most common. After the supply of locking gas caps was exhausted, the company switched to a non-locking version (resulting in at least 500 cars with no gas flap, but with locking gas caps). The final styling for the hood included the addition of a De Lorean logo and the removal of the grooves, resulting in a completely flat hood. All changes to the hood were made not to alter the look of the car, but for a much more practical reason: production of the grooveless design was faster and more reliable, as the stainless steel would often crack in the process of forming the grooves. Early 1981 Hood Later style one-piece bolster Mid 1981 silver wheel John De Lorean was 6'4" (193 cm) tall, and he designed the car to comfortably fit someone of his stature. For shorter people, the addition of a pull strap made closing the doors much easier from the inside. Pull straps were manufactured as an add-on for earlier vehicles in November 1981. These attach to the existing door handle.

Late-model 1981 cars, and all cars from 1982 and 1983, have doors with integrated pull straps. The side bolstering in the De Lorean was originally separate from the main interior pieces. There is a tendency to place pressure on this piece when entering and exiting the car. This will eventually cause the bolstering to become separated from the trim panel. To help fix this problem, cars built in and after late 1981 have one solid trim piece with the bolster permanently attached. As an addition to later cars, a foot rest or "dead" pedal — in the form of an unusable pedal — was added to the cars to help prevent fatigue while driving. This is one of the few changes that is directly tied to a model year. These were not built in to any 1981 vehicles, and were added to all cars starting with 1982 production. Although the styling of the De Lorean's wheels remained unchanged, the wheels of early-model 1981 vehicles were painted grey. These wheels sported matching grey center caps with an embossed DMC logo.

Early into the 1981 production run, these were changed to a polished silver look, with a contrasting black center cap. The embossed logo on the centre caps was painted silver to add contrast. In 1981, the De Lorean came stocked with a Craig Electronics radio; this was a standard 1980s tape radio with dual knob controls. Since the Craig did not have a built-in clock, one was installed in front of the gear shift. De Lorean switched to an AudioScience stereo in the middle of the 1982 production run. Since the ASI radio featured an on-board clock, the standard De Lorean clock was removed at the same time. The first 2,200 cars produced used a windshield-embedded antenna. This type of antenna proved to be inadequate for most motoring needs, so a standard whip antenna was added to the outside of the front right quarter panel. While improving radio reception, this resulted in a hole in the stainless steel, and an unsightly antenna. As a result, the antenna was again moved, this time to the rear of the car. Automatic antennas were installed under the grills behind the rear driver's-side window.

While giving the reception quality of a whip antenna, these completely disappear from view when not in use. The small sun visors on the De Lorean have vinyl on one side, and headline fabric on the other side. Originally these were installed such that the headliner side would be on the bottom when not in use. Later on in 1981, they were reversed so that the vinyl side would be on the bottom. The original Ducellier alternator supplied with the early production DMC-12s could not provide enough current to supply the car when all lights and electrical options were on; as a result, the battery would gradually discharge, leaving the driver stranded on the road. This happened to De Lorean owner Johnny Carson shortly after he was presented with the vehicle. Later cars were fitted from the factory with a higher output Motorola alternator which solved this problem. Special DMC-12s Several special-edition DMC-12 cars have been produced over the years, and the car is most notably featured as the time machine in the Back to the Future trilogy . The PRV engines of the cars were swapped out for more powerful Porsche engines. Four De Lorean chassis were used during the production (i.e.

exterior scene, stripped down for interior scenes, one decked out with time travel equipment, and one that was "wrecked" by the train). One of several De Lorean prototypes is still in existence, and is currently for sale after undergoing a complete restoration at De Lorean Motor Company of Florida (DMCFL). There have also been major finds in the last few years of "pilot cars". These cars, used for testing of the De Lorean, had been thought destroyed. The test car featured on the front cover of Autocar in 1981 announcing the De Lorean to the world was found in 2003 in a barn in Northern Ireland; it is currently undergoing restoration. Production of the De Lorean started at VIN 500. VINs 502 and 530 were used by Legend Industries as a proof of concept for a twin-turbo version of the standard De Lorean PRV-V6 engine. VIN 530 is undergoing a restoration at PJ Grady's in New York. Vin 502 is owned by DMCFL and is going through a full Concours restoration at that location.

Vin 502 has now (July 2007) been sold by DMCFL and has been exported to New Zealand. The car now resides in Wellington, and has been complied to run on New Zealand roads. Only one other twin-turbo engine is known to exist: it was purchased in the late 1990s by an individual owner. There is also another De Lorean that in its own right will soon join the ranks of becoming a Legend Car, VIN 570, which is now being converted to a full Legend(reproduction) Car by Chris Nicholson of PJ Grady Europe - the present owner of vin 00570. VIN 500, notable for being the first production De Lorean to roll off the line in 1981, is on display in the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland, Ohio . [15] Only 23 right-hand drive models were made for use in the United Kingdom, and as of 2002 these are valued at £25,000 each.

[16] A gold plated De Lorean in Reno, Nevada For Christmas 1981, A De Lorean/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. [17] 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 .

[18] A third gold-plated car exists with 636 miles (1,018 km) clocked up; it carries the VIN plate for the last De Lorean, #20105, though final assembly was actually completed in Columbus, Ohio in 1983. [19] This car was assembled with spare parts that were required by American Express in case one of the other two that were built were damaged. All necessary gold-plated parts were on hand, with the exception of one door. The car was assembled after another door was gold-plated, though the added door does not precisely match the rest of the car in color and grain. The car was first acquired by the winner of a department store raffle. Consolidated International, which owned the department store, had purchased 1,374 DMC-12s during the De Lorean Company's financial troubles, acquiring the remaining stock after the company went into receivership. Now held by a private owner in La Vale, Maryland, the third and last gold-plated De Lorean is currently for sale at the price of $250,000.

This car and the example in Reno have saddle-brown leather interiors, a color scheme which was intended to become an option on later production cars. However, these two cars were the only De Loreans to be thus equipped from factory parts. De Lorean today De Loreans lined up for the 2004 De Lorean Car Show. Despite a short period of production and the passage of several decades, the De Lorean has not been forgotten. Perhaps due to the continued popularity of the Back to the Future films, or simply the cars' uniqueness, the De Lorean seems to hold an indelible place in pop-culture. There are owners' groups, gatherings, and publications dedicated to the car, while a limited program for production of new vehicles and replacement parts was reinstated in 2007 after a nearly a quarter-century. Gatherings and communications The DeLorean Owners Association , founded in 1983, is the largest international De Lorean group. The Association produces a publication for its members, DeLorean World Magazine and has hosted many De Lorean Expos in major cities across the U. S.

The group also sponsors the International DeLorean Eurofest at the original De Lorean factory site in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Association provides members and De Lorean enthusiasts the opportunity to purchase De Lorean and Association-related products from the De Lorean Store and its staff provides members with a wealth of information so they are educated about De Lorean history and the De Lorean automobile. Most notably in the United States , owners have gathered bi-annually (in even-numbered years) for the De Lorean Car Show which draws people from all over the world to a different location each time. Back to the Future cast and crew including Bob Gale , James Tolkan , Jeffrey Weissman , and Claudia Wells [2] have made appearances, and even John De Lorean was known to attend before he died. On years opposite this event (odd numbered years), the De Lorean Motor Company of Texas holds an Open House at their suburban Houston location. Besides these events, local clubs hold events throughout the year featuring driving tours, road rally scavenger hunts, tech sessions, and more. Online, the De Lorean owner base keeps in contact using a mailing list called the De Lorean Mailing List (or DML) .

A De Lorean at a car show in 2005 with OUTATYM licence plate similar to the OUTATIME license plate in Back to the Future . Repair shops Keeping the cars on the road are the specialties of the three remaining De Lorean repair shops: De Lorean Motor Company , PJ Grady DeLorean , and DeLorean One . [3] . These specialty shops service the De Loreans still on the road. The De Lorean Motor Company bought the largest remaining stock of original parts from the Kapac company in 1997. The new DMC (commonly known as "DMC Houston" or "DMC Texas") which has locations in Houston, Florida, The Netherlands, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles, is the only place to find some rare parts, though they also sell through the other full service De Lorean Shops. SpecialTauto.com is the worlds largest independent parts supplier of new,oe and some used and rebuilt DeLorean parts. All parts are available via mail order. Their resources have also allowed some unavailable parts to be produced again, so that replacements for minor parts (such as switches) can now be had for a reasonable price. Overall, obtaining parts is neither difficult nor expensive.

Magazines The magazine of the De Lorean Owners Association is De Lorean World Magazine . De Lorean World Magazine, published twice a year, promotes the image and lifestyle of De Loreans and their owners. It includes technical information, event listings, products, history and feature stories. DeLorean Car Show Magazine (also known as DCS Magazine) is published twice a year by Ken Koncelik. There is also [4] , which is published quarterly by DMC (Texas). Both feature technical articles, news and updates about the De Lorean community. Return to production DMC Houston announced on July 30 , 2007 that the car would be returning into very limited production (about 20 cars per year) in 2008 . [5] The newly produced cars will have a base price of $57,500 and have new stainless steel frames and lighter fiberglass underbodies. De Lorean in popular culture When founding his company, John De Lorean negotiated with many celebrities to persuade them to back the new De Lorean car and the company.

Johnny Carson, talk show host/comedian, was given a De Lorean and also invested in DMC; other famous owners included (writer Matthew Reilly, Patrick Swayze, Jim Varney, James Bourne, baseball player Howard Johnson, Bobby Allison, and Chevy Chase. The DMC-12 was featured and mentioned in many films and on television, most notably as the time machine designed by Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy . Brown's rationale for choosing the De Lorean was stated in the first film : "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" He also indicates that the stainless steel construction of the automobile is advantageous for the "flux dispersal" of a time machine. In addition to elaborate enhancements for time travel, the fictional car was later modified with flying capabilities and a " Mr. Fusion " (a fictional fusion reactor , which came from the year 2015 ). Six DMC-12s were co-opted for use in the making of the films. For the second and third films, producers replaced the underpowered stock engines in their production cars with Porsche engines.

The Back to the Future Part II De Lorean was seen as a prop that Amanda Bynes rested on in the movie Big Fat Liar. Main article: References to Back to the Future In large part due to the popularity of Back to the Future, the DeLorean has been seen in many other contexts as well, including The Simpsons , The Wedding Singer , The Fairly Oddparents , Monster Garage , Wikipedia:Rocky 3 , Wikipedia:Malibu Express , Drawn Together , Family Guy , Haker, Get a Life , Matlock , Stargate Atlantis , Eerie Indiana , Donnie Darko , Harvey Birdman , Designing Women , Just Shoot Me! , Be Kind Rewind and also Minoriteam . In most of these films and television shows, actors are seen driving a DMC-12 or mentioning the De Lorean in dialogue. As well, the DeLorean is referenced during a television spot on Wikipedia:The Learning Channel as part of their life lesson ad campaign. It can also been seen in Stuntaman's Fly, where the car is used as a time machine. The theme of the video is easily recognized as Back to the Future.

Additionally, in the film Knocked Up , there is a dinner scene in which Back to the Future lines are quoted and the DeLorean is mentioned. The DMC-12 was also featured in Golden Shower 's video "Total Control" as well as the Son of Dork video "Ticket out of Loserville" During the opening sequence of the movie Rocky III , Rocky Balboa appears in a print ad for the DeLorean. In the episode " Cocktails " of the US version of The Office , Michael Scott drinks a toast to Lee Iacocca, and refers to the DeLorean as Mr.

Iacocca's "failed experiment." The DMC-12 has also been featured in many computer and video games , most notably in the Back to the Future games ; but also in Carmageddon: Splat Pack (1997), Wikipedia:Duke Nukem: Time to Kill ( 1998 ), Wikipedia:South Park Rally (1998), Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now (1998), M25 Racer ( 1999 ), Wikipedia:Interstate '82 (1999), Wikipedia:Vigilante 8: Second Offense (1999), Wikipedia:Resident Evil 2 (1998), Wikipedia:Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999), Wikipedia:Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions (2002), Wikipedia:Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) (lookalike, without gull-wing doors, named "Deluxo"), Wikipedia:Wikipedia:R Racing Revolution (2004), Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Gran Turismo 4 (2005), Wikipedia:Enthusia Professional Racing (20

05), Wikipedia:FlatOut 2 ( 2006 ), Redline (2006), Wikipedia:Scarface: The World is Yours (2006) (with scissor doors instead of gull-wing doors, named "Delphine") and Wikipedia:Project Gotham Racing 4 (2007).

It is also downloadable as an add-on car for Wikipedia:Midtown Madness 2 in both the original DMC design and the Back to the Future design. Two versions of the DMC-12 from the second Back to the Future movies (flying mode and ground mode), (and other Back to the Future props) are also downloadable for The Sims from a popular fan site. In most of these video games, the cars are lookalikes or clones of the De Lorean, though not actually named "De Loreans" or featuring the De Lorean logo, to avoid trademark issues. It is also the main piece of transportation in the Back to the Future Mod for GTA:Vice City , where the Delorean is available in DMC-12, 04' Delorean, and BTTF variants. In Wikipedia:Moby 's video "We Are All Made Of Stars" a DeLorean appears briefly. The rapper Wikipedia:Ludacris mentions the De Lorean in his song "U Got A Problem?" The lyric reads, "I bring 'em "Back to the Future" like a '85 Delorean." In the music video for Archive 's song "Again" a DMC-12 appears.

The whole video is made in CGI, and so is the DeLorean. See also Was the DeLorean in Back to the Future a product placement? - Quora Quora Was the DeLorean in Back to the Future a product placement? If so, how much did it cost? Written Oct 10, 2011 The original version of the time machine was actually going to be a refrigerator but was changed in part to not encourage children climbing into old refrigerators. The DeLorean was chosen for its gull wing doors and futuristic look a bonus being that it would look like a spaceship in the barn scene in 1955. 358 Views How much is spent on the product placement in India? Related Questions Written Nov 19, 2015 I had three very interesting experiences on commercial airlines, one of them terrifying but then funny. About ten minutes after takeoff, the pilot came on the P.A. and said "Ladies and gentlemen, due to a malfunction ...." and then he just stopped. People turned white. Then he continued "... in the coffee machine, we will have no hot coffee on today's flight. We apologize for the inconvenience... Written Aug 30 Diamond Rings.

Having been in marketing, I will tell you about the most successful advertisement campaign in history - made by De Beers Diamond Corporation. Before 1930, exchanging rings was not a marital tradition. In 1938, De Beer launch an ad campaign, and we ate it up. Diamonds don’t even have intrinsic value, which is why we have been indoctrinated by Hollywood to remember that they “Last Fo... If you aren't happy, you aren't successful. You may have lots of money but you aren't successful. " “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” John Lennon... How John DeLorean Went Back To The Future How To Be More Like Tom Hardy, In 11 Simple Steps How John DeLorean Went Back To The Future What connects Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the infamous hunger striker Bobby Sands with one of the worlds most iconic and celebrated film franchises of all time?

None other than the classic DeLorean DMC-12 car of course. Most Popular By Words by Richard Benson | Photographs by Benedict Redgrove Oct 11, 2014 E-mail In 1968, around the time he was making the first sketches of the dream sports car that he would one day build, John DeLorean gave an interview to Newsweek in which he attacked the conservatism of the US automobile industry. “These rock radio stations, the things they say, what they discuss – that’s what counts,” he said. As the 43-year-old engineer-executive heading General Motors’ Pontiac division, he was inspired by the new youth culture’s emphasis on feeling, and was using records and merchandise to market dreams rather than cars. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below He had become infamous for making adverts the way Peter Saville would later make record sleeves: devoid of information concerning, say, price or miles per gallon. His ads were essentially short films based on Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Un Homme et une Femme. Beautiful people driving beautiful cars – that’s what worked now, he told the journalist. In the modern age, there was no need for facts.

“Nobody wants to know about that bullshit,” he said. “That’s Detroit talking.” Most Popular A GM colleague would tell one of his biographers: “The word genius is overused, but DeLorean was at the top of his profession. He had a sense of what the public wanted, even if it didn’t know what it wanted already. He created style, and that is a precious commodity.” But, the colleague added, DeLorean was “a God-awful administrator”. That ability to create and style, and the poor admin skills, would produce one of the most notorious, radical and cultish cars ever. It’s a story encompassing Hollywood actors and models, two British governments, a Formula One racing team, Northern Ireland’s Troubles and IRA hunger strikers, a high-profile FBI cocaine-smuggling bust and one of the biggest movie franchises of all time. “Cars, girls and the pitfalls of celebrity culture and the American dream,” says the Super Furry Animals’ singer Gruff Rhys, who, as half of Neon Neon, recorded Stainless Style, a 2008 concept album based on DeLorean’s life.

There have been many cult cars over the years, but none owes quite so much of its status to the story of its creation. The gull-wing doored, V6-engined, stainless steel-panelled DeLorean DMC-12 sports car, manufactured by a rebel US businessman with British taxpayers’ money in Belfast between 1981 and 1983, not only looks good but has arguably the strangest history of any mass-manufactured car. In 2014, the DeLorean DMC-12 is enjoying a revival of interest, with prices for good-condition cars reaching an all-time high of £20,000-plus (in the mid–late Eighties, they were down to £4,000–£5,000). Christopher Lloyd and the DeLorean time machine recently reprised their Back to the Future roles with a cameo in Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West.

The Norwegian DJ Todd Terje released the single “Delorean Dynamite”, and in March, Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin excited the geeks (who have loved the car since Back to the Future) by swapping a model dragon egg for a loan of sci-fi writer Ernest Cline’s DMC-12. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below The car has become shorthand for a glitzy, high-tech early-Eightiesness. Meanwhile, in Detroit, old rumours of a Hollywood-produced John DeLorean biopic have reappeared in The Detroit News. A documentary, DeLorean: Living the Dream, is scheduled for release in 2015. In Houston, the DeLorean Motor Company, which since 1995 has rebuilt DMC-12s using the trademark that it bought, is working on the $95,000 electric-powered version of a DeLorean (the DMCev), first announced at the New York Motor Show in 2012. It will do 0–60mph in 4.9 seconds and is expected to retail for north of $100,000.

The plan is to have it ready for Back to the Future’s 30th anniversary next year. "It was really inspired when I saw the Tesla Roadster," says Stephen Wynn, DMC’s new CEO, who emigrated from Liverpool to the US in 1980. "We’re not trying to outperform Tesla, we’re trying to do something different." And in Belfast, where the car has a mythic significance akin to the city’s other globally-famous engineering achievement, RMS Titanic, the crowds still come for a glimpse of the stainless steel or a sit in the low-slung seats. At the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, the DeLoreans (a production model and a wooden dummy) remain the most popular exhibits, requiring extra barriers to hold back visitors (they can’t touch; fingers leave dark marks on the stainless steel). Advertisement - Continue Reading Below The DeLorean DMC-12 with one of its two inital interior choices, in grey At the headquarters of DeLorean Hire in Aghalee outside Belfast, owner Keith McCracken, a mechanic by trade, fields about 25 enquiries a week from people wanting to hire the cars for social engagements, birthdays or promotions.

“It’s mostly people in their twenties and thirties,” he says. “They don’t remember them, but their older relations grew up with it, and they’ve seen it in the film. Multichannel TV means the films are on all the time, so it gets seen more often.” McCracken credits Back to the Future with enhancing the car’s status. Phil Bell, editor of Classic Cars, agrees, pointing out that the Aston Martin DB5 would not have attained its iconic status without the influence of Goldfinger, either. “The DMC-12 is a piece of motoring folklore and the surviving cars have a cult following of devoted enthusiasts,” Bell says.

“Purists deride it as a badly engineered gimmick and commercial failure – they’re certainly nothing like as good to drive as a contemporary Porsche or Lotus – but you only have to observe the spellbinding effect these cars have in public to understand the appeal.” Most Popular *** To fully perceive the car’s attraction, you have to understand John Zachary DeLorean’s role as one of the mid-20th century US mavericks who in the post-war period ushered in a new, freer, self-expressive approach to life that competed with the conformity of the industrial era. In the Fifties and early Sixties, US automotive manufacturing was the biggest industry in the biggest economy in the world. General Motors, Chrysler, Ford and the rest employed one-sixth of all working American men, and embodied the national dream of personal mobility and independence. Board members and divisional heads were celebrities, chrome-plated kings in Detroit, political players in Washington, moneyed faces in the media. And DeLorean, son of an irascible, violent Romanian immigrant who worked in Ford’s Detroit factory, rose like a champagne cork through petrol.

Handsome, charming and a brilliant engineer, he invented the muscle car with the ‘64 Pontiac GTO, became GM’s youngest-ever divisional head and, in the Seventies, revitalised the entire Chevrolet brand for General Motors. He wore long sideburns and unbuttoned shirts, dyed his hair and had a chin implant to improve his jawline. He commanded a social circle in California that included Johnny Carson, Engelbert Humperdinck, Sammy Davis Jr and starlets; he married actress/models Kelly Harmon, then Cristina Ferrare. Ruthless in business dealings, he also courted controversy, speaking out in favour of civil rights and – at a time when Detroit was being criticised for lax safety standards, poor build quality and a lack of environmental awareness – championed consumer safety and fuel efficiency. Even so, he was tipped to be GM’s next president, but in 1973 grew disillusioned and left. He announced he would launch a new, mass-market car brand – the first since Walter Chrysler in 1925 – beginning with a revolutionary, ethically-made sports car.

Inspired by the Sixties’ popularity of basic, economical four-cylinder European sports cars such as the Alfa Romeo Spider, he saw a gap in the market – to manufacture sports cars in smaller numbers and sell them at higher prices, thus reducing the capital investment. This model also was more likely to receive subsidies: it would not be competing with US employers in the same market (apart from Chevrolet’s Corvette, there was no other mass-produced US sports car). Advertisement - Continue Reading Below The American public dug the idea and by 1976, DeLorean had raised several million dollars from investors including Carson, Davis Jr, the author Ira Levin and country singer Roy Clark. John Zachary DeLorean lived large – paying himself $125,000 a year – and moved into lavish Manhattan offices where he showed little interest in the nuts and bolts of his plans. He then went looking for the $70–90m he needed from countries seeking to attract businesses in order to cut high unemployment rates. He looked for grants, and talked to Puerto Rico, Spain and the Republic of Ireland.

He hustled and played them off each other, but as time passed and new recessions developed, some of those countries began to question the US people’s interest in his rather Sixties-ish dream car. Then, however, he talked to the British government and two rather desperate needs interlocked. In the late Seventies, economic decline and the Troubles were feeding off each other, turning Northern Ireland into an economic basket case, with Catholic west Belfast particularly badly affected. Roy Mason, the then-Labour government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, noting its 50 per cent unemployment figure, described it as “an enclave of the Third World within the UK”. The strategy of Mason and the Northern Ireland Development Agency (NIDA) was to stem IRA recruitment by bringing “jobs, homes and hope” to the region. DeLorean, promising to create 2,500 jobs and a prestige company that would attract others inside 18 months, was irresistible.

Although the government’s own consultant’s report was sceptical, NIDA took only 45 days to agree to give DeLorean around £54m in grants and loans – the vast bulk of what he required to build his Belfast operation and fund the company – with very little control over the project. DeLorean flew in to sign the deal in front of international news reporters in 1978, and then announced he was going house hunting. He wanted to buy a castle. The story, of course, ended in an international scandal, but those who worked at the factory are still loyal to the memory of its founder. Neal Barclay joined the DeLorean shipping department in March 1981, when he was in his early twenties. His job was to park DMC-12s for the transporters to load and ferry them to the docks. His house in north Belfast remains a shrine to the company: images of the car, shelves of books, boxes of cuttings and letters and, above the fireplace, a large picture of the car he rescued from a skip after some company offices were firebombed the night hunger-striker Bobby Sands died. “It was the best job I ever had,” Barclay says.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below “It was the atmosphere – everyone was caught up in the car and its story. It was in the media all the time, so you followed it all; we were part of this story about this glamorous, wealthy guy who looked like a Hollywood star.” To Barclay, not aligned politically or religiously, it seemed the factory would be the first part of a decent future for a city with a proud engineering history. “I’d go out collecting materials from local suppliers, so you could see the benefit – John DeLorean gave us hope.” He shows me photo after photo and videos from those days of hope. It is noticeable that most of the people in them are smiling. “I had a dream job, no mistake,” he says. “But then it turned into a nightmare.” Most Popular The original DMC-12 (named, some claim, because it was intended to retail for $12,000) was to be made from fibreglass with stainless steel panels, making it lighter (and thus more fuel-efficient), safer and rust-free. It would have distinctive gull-wing doors (DeLorean was very taken with the Fifties’ Mercedes 300SL) and a rear-mounted engine.

The point was to be new: DeLorean felt Detroit had been selling customers the same car with cosmetic changes for 20 years. He drew some sketches himself, but commissioned the styling from Giorgetto Giugiaro’s legendary Italdesign company, famous for its work with the finest European automobile brands. By the time it came to build the car, the designs proved dated and manufacturing issues necessitated changes, so DeLorean partnered with Colin Chapman’s Lotus. Then the dominant force in F1, it re-engineered the car at its base outside Norwich (critics later noted its more-than-passing resemblance to the Lotus Esprit). The 72-acre factory complex was built in record time between Republican and Loyalist areas in Dunmurry, south of Belfast. Driving there from the airport, visitors passed checkpoints, burned-out buildings and painted kerbstones. The managers were mostly young, the receptionist a former beauty queen, the marketing slogan “To live the dream”; 800 applied for jobs, attracted by good wages and working conditions. Sectarian symbols were banned, and tension notably absent. “Everyone was for DeLorean,” says Mark Kennedy, curator at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

“You could never get a consensus on anything here, but everyone believed this would be a good thing.” The beginning was rocky: deadlines were missed, DeLorean wanted more government money and the first cars were so poor they had to be reworked in the US. By the end of 1981, though, orders were good and the factory was humming despite its largely inexperienced workforce. Subsequent stories tended to obscure the fact that for a while DeLorean constituted – as highly-experienced former executive Nick Sutton wrote in his book The DeLorean Story – “a little miracle”. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below There were problems in the summer of 1981: the hunger strikers were dying. Bobby Sands was from the Catholic Twinbrook estate next to the factory, and Sutton remembers firebombs, staff working around British soldiers trying to protect the complex, and men stopping work in the body shop to commemorate the dead.

But the factory was not heavily targeted as has been claimed and the company was to an extent co-opted: at Sands’ funeral, some men among the 100,000 there held a banner saying “DeLorean Nationalist Workers” and showing a DMC-12 smashing through an H, signifying the H-Blocks at Maze prison. The real difficulties began with ongoing recession and the extreme winter of 1982 (automobile lore says people do not buy cars when there is snow on the ground) and intensified when John DeLorean tried to boost his planned flotation of the company by doubling production to 80 cars a week. The target was unreachable, and as extra materials had to be ordered, the company ran out of money, a process speeded up by the owner’s largesse and ludicrously high-spending operation in the US (it was alleged, incorrectly, that DeLorean had solid gold taps in his bathroom). The first profligacy scandal broke in the autumn as he was asking Britain for yet more money. Whispers about corruption and DeLorean’s links to the criminal world never ceased.

The company went into receivership in February 1982, and in October, John DeLorean was entrapped by the FBI in a Los Angeles motel room as he took part in a huge deal to buy $24m of cocaine. He had been trying to raise money to save the business; at one point he looked into a briefcase full of cocaine and remarked it was “better than gold”. Although later acquitted, his character was tarnished – but there was more to come. It was soon uncovered that he and Colin Chapman had embezzled around £10m of investment money intended for the business. At one of several subsequent US trials for fraud and negligence, his now ex-wife Cristina said that while they were married, she had watched him forging signatures, handling documents with rubber gloves and steaming open envelopes. He avoided jail, but would never be a serious player in business again. He died of a stroke in 2005, aged 80 (his tomb at Michigan’s White Chapel Memorial Cemetery depicts a DMC-12, with its gull-wing doors open).

John DeLorean and his then-wife Cristina Ferrare with the DMC-12 1979 Advertisement - Continue Reading Below There remains a persistent rumour in Belfast that the FBI plot was ordered by then-president Ronald Reagan as a favour to Margaret Thatcher. The argument runs that she wanted to avoid criticism for not funding DeLorean further while continuing to pump money into other local businesses that employed mainly Loyalist labour. Whatever the explanation, the factory finally closed in early 1983; 9,000 DMC-12s had been produced, of which some 6,000 are estimated to still be in running order. Three gold-plated cars exist; part of a planned 100 that American Express aimed to sell for $85,000 each to its gold card holders. Inside one of these vehicles, a member of staff had secretly written lines from the King James Version of the New Testament: “Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rest of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.

Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” In the last crate of the last shipment, workers placed a small coffin with a dummy of John DeLorean dressed in factory overalls and a photo of his face cut out from a magazine. Most Popular The resurrection, of the car if not the man, began in 1985, and originated with director Robert Zemeckis’ anxiety about a refrigerator. Zemeckis and his writing partner Bob Gale had some years earlier finished a script about a teenager and his eccentric inventor friend travelling through time in a fridge, but every studio in Hollywood had passed. Opinions changed in 1984 after Zemeckis had a hit directing Romancing the Stone, an adventure caper in the Raiders of the Lost Ark mould. Fine-tuning the script, Zemeckis worried that kids might copy the movie and become stuck inside fridges. A car seemed a good alternative and the DeLorean DMC-12 was chosen to boost a gag in the script.

“When Marty [McFly] arrived in 1955,” Zemeckis explains in Back to the Future: The Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy, “we wanted the family to mistake the time machine for a flying saucer. We searched for the appropriate vehicle and found that the DeLorean’s gull-wing doors and design give it the resemblance of a spaceship.” Keith McCracken says it is, above all, the flying car – seen briefly at the end of the first Back to the Future, and at length in the sequels – that people remember (“that and the flashing lights inside”). To achieve that, Zemeckis had a lightweight, full-sized car built and flown on wires, with George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic studios supplying shots with one-fifth-sized models complete with puppet Martys and Doc Browns. Flying cars and all, the trilogy has become one of the most profitable franchises of all time, and the DeLorean symbolised for Eighties and Nineties’ kids what Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 had for their parents. There is now a mini-automotive subculture of conversions with most DeLorean “time machine” parts available online.

McCracken has converted three cars, one from each film (“Google it, ‘Flux Capacitor’ or whatever, you’ll find it”) and keeps another pristine model for himself. When he takes me out in it, I notice three things: the first is how bright the stainless steel shines, the second is how loud it is (even for a sports car), and the third is you have to be careful how you close the doors, which can stick. It is hard to shake the idea of it being a UFO. People at DeLorean conventions claim the police at checkpoints in Northern Ireland had similar feelings when, in the early Eighties, the engineers would illicitly take models out at night to test them, safe in the knowledge that the cars were fast enough not to be caught. These stories may or may not be true, but then when you’re talking about the DMC-12, you get to a point where facts and figures are not the most important thing. That’s Detroit talking, after all. *** On a cold spring afternoon in north Belfast, Neal Barclay shows me his collection of clips on DVD and video. One has him speaking at a DeLorean convention in Gettsyburg, Pennsylvania, a few years ago.

He is a tentative but compelling speaker; his love for the subject winning through his nerves. I have heard about the speech from other enthusiasts: Neal’s emotion was such, they say, that after he spoke people crowded around him for hours, leaving the actors who had appeared in the Back to the Future movies somewhat neglected. Neal presses play and the footage rolls: “I call DeLorean Motor Cars Limited Belfast’s other Titanic,” he tells the crowd. “John was the captain of the ship. We the workers were the crew. The investors – the Labour government, the dealers and others – were the paying passengers… We were on a collision course, heading straight for the iceberg – Thatcher’s government. The ship sank, but a few years later it was time to raise it, in a film called Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox were great, so were all the other actors, actresses and everyone involved in the making of the film, but the DMC-12 was the real star for me.” He gulps and pauses, fighting back tears. “The film made me proud… It confirmed that the car was not a failure.” History. After the factory closed, Neal Barclay was unemployed for two years.

He hoped for another driving job, which he found driving road sweepers for the council, and has done so ever since. It’s decent money, he says, because he does the city centre, which is regular work. In the front room, under that image of a DeLorean DMC-12 he retrieved from a factoryskip 30 years ago, Neal looks at me. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m a bit emotional there.” I say everybody gets emotional about this car. “We were caught up in something. It was about more than a car, you know… we were living the dream. We were living in John DeLorean’s dream.” This article was first printed in Issue 4 of Esquire's Big Black Book. On newsstands now . *** DeLorean: New cars for sale | ‘Back To The Future’ cars to be made Hey McFly, you can buy a brand-new DeLorean again January 29, 201612:21pm Chris Perez and staff writers New York Post BUT will they run on Plutonium?

The DeLorean Motor Company is going “Back to the Future” — and resurrecting the iconic car that Marty McFly and Doc Brown made famous in the 1980s time-travelling trilogy. Thanks to the recent passage of a new law permitting the sale of up to 300 historical car replicas per year, the Texas-based manufacturers are now allowed to start selling brand-new DeLorean DMC-12 models after a 34-year break in production. “It’s fantastic,” DeLorean CEO Stephen Wynne told NBC News on Wednesday. “It is a game-changer for us, you know. We’ve been wanting this to happen.” Starting in 2017, the car company plans to crank out as many as 325 DeLoreans over a five-year production period. The 1982 replicas will cost at least $100,000 ($142,000 AUD) each, depending on the engine. “Ooit, ooit!” Picture: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images.Source:Getty Images And yes, they will still have those famous, gull-wing doors. “There’s no reason to change the appearance of the car,” Wynne said.

“As we go into the program, we’ll decide what areas need to be freshened up.” While an estimated 9,200 DeLoreans were built between 1981 and 1982, only 6,500 are believed to still be cruising the streets today, according to The DeLorean Museum. The DeLorean Australia enthusiasts’ website estimates that there are “probably at least 80 or more” in Australia. Refurbished DMC-12s are known to cost between $45,000 and $55,000 ($64,000-78,000 AUD). The new models will feature a V6 engine that produces around 350 to 370 horsepower, officials said. In comparison, the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6 that was in the original DeLorean was only able to put out a measly 130 horsepower. The new DMC-12s will also be fitted with larger tires and wheels, modern-day brakes and futuristic amenities that would have Doc Brown screaming “Great Scott!” — such as heated seats, a GPS navigation system and Bluetooth phone connectivity.

But DeLorean officials have yet to find out whether or not the vehicle will be able to launch to 88mph (142km/h) while being shot at by Libyan terrorists, like the classic scene in the first Back to the Future. “We’re still waiting to hear back from Doc Brown on that,” DeLorean vice president James Espey told Maxim magazine on Wednesday. Japan: Bio-ethanol powered Delorean at 'Back to the Future' day 20152:14 Film buffs celebrated 'Back to the Future' day in Tokyo in 2015 with a display of a recycling powered automobile. Japanese inventor Iwamoto Yoshi Tomohiko customised a DeLorean DMC-12, which resembles the famous car from the 'Back to the Future' film series, to generate bio-ethanol from cotton t-shirts. Tomohiko exhibited his invention in front of several hundred onlookers and press. The inventor tied in his creation with the iconic DeLorean car from the 'Back to the Future' films, which also ran on an alternative energy source.

October 21, 2015, is the date which the film's characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in the 'Back to the Future II' film. Celebrations to mark the date are planned all over the world. In London beverage company Pepsi (the character Marty's drink of choice) are screening the original film in London's Leicester Square. Whilst in Los Angeles, the film's cast and crew are to attend an official screening along with a tour of some of the films locations, including the Burger King from which McFly starts his commute to school. November 3rd 2015

Question: What type of doors did the DeLorean in "Back to the Future" have?
Answer: Gull-wing