Autoblog

Okay, let's get this straight. Back to the Future movies: cool. Making your DeLorean into a replica of the movie car: incredibly lame. Halfway between would be a reproduction flux capacitor. If you did buy this thing, you could certainly attain full lameness by installing in in your non-DeLorean.

There were talented people working in the entertainment industry to dream up those iconic vehicles of the 1980s like KITT, the BTF DeLorean and the A-Team van. Those cars have staying power with a generation of enthusiasts, but dressing up your car to match a prop is akin to putting on your C-3PO finery to go see Episode III. If you must have it for your '96 Neon, climb the stairs from your basement lair and ask your mom for $220 for what equates to a couple of lights in a box. Hey, Christmas is coming, if you jump up and down and stomp like you did in '85, you'll find this thing under the tree.

[Source: Engadget]

This is what happens when you don't get those 1.21 Jigowatts of power flowing cleanly. One unfortunate Delorean owner recently had a bit of a meltdown, but we don't think Doc Brown was anywhere in the immediate vicinity. An instant classic after its appearance in the "Back To The Future" movies, the Delorean was one of those "could have been" cars that captured a lot of people's imaginations. Among them is director Robert Zemeckis, who cast the Irish-built, French-powered, stainless-steel wonder in his films. The gullwing doors, naked stainless body and overall rakish shape promised so much more than the Renault V6 delivered, but the car still had quite a following.

The DeLorean still does have a following, as a matter of fact. Some people even use them as their daily drivers. This particular example was found near a pawn shop, and photographed for posterity. We see no evidence of a Flux Capacitor, so we can only guess that those modifications burned away during this sample's untimely demise. With nearly 130 years of wear and tear on it, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that it might have had a few mechanical issues. It did manage to succeed in traveling from 1985 to 1955 and back again, with stops in 2015 and 1885 along the way, after all.

Thanks for the tip, aL!

[Source: Chalkline]

A few months back we told you about 10 pages of sketches done by John Delorean in 1980 that wound up on eBay. Well, this time 24 more pages of Delorean notes are up for auction dating all the way back to 1976. The sketches show details of a still-born DMC super luxury sedan that could easily be on the market today. Delorean's scribbles suggest air bags, a $49,999 price tag, front-wheel drive, carbon fiber door reinforcements, and a turbocharged rotary engine, among other ideas. Some of the notations like "special tires" are kind of funny, but how cool is it to have the doodles of what some consider to be an automotive visionary on a couple dozen pages of college ruled? The sedan would have used a Citroen CX chassis and could have been assembled with Bricklin or Jensen.

The sketches in the notes do expose Delorean as a lousy drawer, but the ideas are very fresh. A Gucci interior or promotional deals with famous athletes are thoughts that pop up today. Since the vehicle never saw the light of day, we can only speculate on where the Flux Capacitor would have been located. The trunk seems logical.

[Source: Winding Road]

The DeLorean Motor Company owes a lot to the Back to the Future franchise for its reverred place in pop culture history. While the original DeLorean Motor Company has ceased to exist, a different DeLorean Motor Company is now operating that does everything for the DMC-12, including full restores and offering original factory replacement parts. The new DMC also has a sense of humor, as the Digg.com community learned last night.

Someone noticed that if you typed "flux" into DMC's online store search, the results would come up with a Flux Capacitor (part #18851985 - nice) for $5,995. This led to other Digg members trying out different searches, and it wasn't long before a Hover Conversion was also found (part #19852015) for $12,995. Needless to say, the Digg community went crazy, voted the submission to up over 3,000 diggs, and inundated DMC's website traffic. Some people actually went so far as to the order the fictitious parts, which required them to enter their credit card numbers, and in turn they received an actual order confirmation.



Last night around 11PM EST, however, DMC decided it had had enough fun and took the items out of its inventory. Thankfully, they're good sports and reinserted the items today, this time without prices. So, if you've got a DeLorean, you can now get your flux capacitor and hover conversion, too. Then all you'll need is 1.21 gigawatts!

[Source: Digg]