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Without the DeLorean, the Doc and Marty would never have been able to move forwards and backwards in time. Back in 1985, the DeLorean custom car, with its gull wing doors and sleek body was already something to catch your eye as it passed you on the road. With the additions given to it by Doc Brown, it's one of the most sought after ever!
The DeLorean has seen some changes through the three films it's appeared in. Back to the Future saw it at its most basic, though the car had been adopted by Doc to prepare it for time travel. In the film, you could see that the interior was packed with delicate instrumentation including the time circuits and controls, and the all-important flux capacitor, nestling safely between the seats towards the back of the car. It's this capacitor that enables the car to jump the time barrier, providing the car reaches eighty-eight miles per hour.
Power is another factor in the equation - originally, the Doc used plutonium to give the car the necessary energy to break its way through the fourth dimension, but problems (it's hard to buy in the corner shop, Libyan terrorists etc.) meant Doc soon had to find a different power source. Somewhere in the ecologically concious future, he discovers a way to power the time circuits using ordinary garbage! Not only that - he installs flying circuits in the car so it can fly!
But a flying car is more of a target for lightning than one on the ground, especially in the thunder storm in 1955. When lightning hit the car and sent it - and Doc - back to 1885, it also destroyed time and flying circuits, When we see DeLorean moving again it looks even stranger than ever, with a weird array of valves and flash bulbs strapped to its bonnnet to replace the damaged microcircuitry and the huge tyres that make it like a funny car.
Whatever it looked like, you could be sure that the time travelling DeLorean promised excitement and adventure wherever it went. Whether Doc will ever build another one, now he has his strange
time-travelling steam engine, remains to be seen. Who knows the future?!
Back to the Facts
No less than seven different DeLoreans were used in the making of the three films, including one 'process' car which can be dismantled for easy access, and a lightweight fibreglass model. War surplus supplies provided many of the DeLorean's accessories for the first film but these were not available by the time Part II began production so they had to be recreated by hand. However the 2015 Mr Fusion attachment (used to power the time travel facility) was fashioned from a Krupps coffee grinder!
The time travel effects were the results of painstaking work by Industrial Light and Magic, who carried out all the effects in the Back to the Future films. A combination of practical, optical and animated processes, the effects took many months to achieve but are on screen for just few seconds as the DeLorean breaks the time barrier.
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