Second Section of Information: Back to the Future

Back to the Future: Bringing Back a Failure

          The original film in the Back To The Future franchise hit the big screen in 1985, only a few years after the fall of the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) in 1982. After a bit of research as to why the DeLorean was chosen for the role it played in the film, I was given the simple answer of, “it would plausibly look like a spacecraft to people in the 1950s flashback scenes”. This answer makes complete sense to me but I still want to find out if the film really caused the DeLorean to have an uproar of fame or if it was something else.

Since the company DMC went bankrupt so early on in its production, many saw it as a lost cause and that the DeLorean was done for and it was pretty much impossible to get one. However, several special-edition DMC-12 cars have been produced and it is in fact most notably known for its role in the Back to the Future film trilogy. Six DeLorean chassis were used during filming and because of its unique look in the film, many people have attempted to recreate it on the aftermarket with spare parts. This just goes to show how popular the DeLorean really was and since April 20th, 2016, the official Back to the Future DeLorean can be viewed at the Petersen Automotive Museum.

Although many prototypes were created for the DMC-12, there is only one in existence today! Proto 1 received an entire restoration, and is kept on display at the DeLorean Motor Company of Florida (DMCFL). In the last few years, there has been major finds of the 28 known “pilot cars”. These cars, used for testing of the DeLorean, were thought to have been destroyed. One of the cars, the one that had been featured on the front cover of Autocar in 1981, an article that announced the DeLorean to the world, was found in in 2003 in a barn in Northern Ireland and is currently undergoing restoration.

  Although the DeLorean became a legend for its role in the Back to the Future films, there is not much left of it today and chances are, even if they do bring it back like the rumors say, it won’t come back very strongly. It was never popular during its first years, when it first was announced to the world, and now that I have answers to any questions I had in my first post titled Introduction, I am content with these last years being the DeLorean’s final stretch of fame. Who knows, maybe more will be discovered about the lost prototypes and popularity will strike once more!