The Inside Story of the DeLorean Time Machine

If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember the story of how John DeLorean built his odd futuristic sports car in Northern Ireland and financed it with cocaine trafficking. For anyone younger, the car is synonymous with just one thing- the time machine in the Back to the Future movies. The process of turning a automotive failure into the coolest thing in cinema wasn’t an easy task.

Originally, three DeLorean cars were converted into time machines over the course of 10 weeks at a cost of around $150,000. Carried out by the same team responsible for another of our favorite fictional vehicles, Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T., the company created one hero car, one stunt car with added props for creating the distinctive fire trails, and a third DeLorean was cut into pieces for filming interior shots. Its first time on camera? December 14, 1984.

Urban Ghosts has details on each stage of preparing the DeLoreans for their star turn, including the roles they played in the sequels, and what ultimately happened to those vehicles. Oh yeah, and there’s lots of great pictures, too.  

(Image credit: Terabass)