Let’s all travel back to 1981, not literally, but in our minds. The 80’s had one year under their belt and everyone was wondering (I assume) “What is this decade going to offer man kind?” The space race was over, almost a decade worth of moon silt had settled over the last footsteps. The world felt beleaguered yet optimistic, but who would lead us out of this slump?
Enter John DeLorean, the man, the genius, the alleged drug trafficker. He had a dream to build a car, but not just any car, a stainless steel chariot bearing his namesake. A chariot with gull wing doors stretching across the horizon, wings the likes of which haven’t been seen Marahute carried Cody across the Australian outback.
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
The first DeLorean rolled off the assembly line on January 21, 1981 making today its 33rd birthday and it’s aged well, though it’s numbers have dwindled low enough to be considered critically endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, if they cared about such things. Production only lasted two years, there were 9000 units manufactured of which only 6500 are estimated to survive today.
The car featured doors supported by cryogenically preset torsion bars developed by Gumman Aerospace making it effectively one step away from a time machine/space ship already. Doc Brown just saw an obvious opportunity and seized it. Its exterior was covered in stainless steel save for three units that were plated in 24 karat gold and given to the top members of John’s cartel. Source: my imagination. In reality, they were sold to wealthy eccentrics for ridiculous sums of money, but I like my story better.
There’s no good explanation for those doors except to easily transport pallets of cocaine and cocaine accessories.
Contrary to popular belief the gull wing doors only require 11 inches of clearance to open, this is due to the location of the hinges. This is a useful feature because parking in the future is a nightmare. Due to manufacturing constraints and dream killing “safety requirements” the U.S. version of the DMC-12 had some performance problems and took 10.5 seconds to get from zero to sixty, no word on how long it took to get to 88. Presumably Doc Brown got around this problem by completely disregarding safety concerns, as any mad scientist is wont to do, and powering the thing with Plutonium.
Though acceleration may be a concern to peasants like you and me, the doc and Marty laughed all the way through the space-time continuum with his modifications. Starting with approximately 150 horse power the good doctor added the famed flux capacitor. He explains to Marty that the stainless steel exterior assists with “flux dispersal” and runs on 1.21 jigawatts of power, creating approximately 1.6 million horse power. No man should possess that much power, especially one with such blatant disregard for common sense, and hair product.
Poor Marty just thought he’d spend some time with the crazy codger down the block to get some service hours for a merit badge and was unwittingly pulled into potentially universe ending adventures, but it was fun right? Right!
The fun hasn’t yet ended for the DeLorean, like a shiny metal phoenix it will spread its doors and rise anew. On October 18, 2011 (approximately four years before the events of Back to the Future II) it was announced that an all-electric model would be available for sale by 2013, which explains why the doc’s time machine could so easily blend in. Then again, that entire future was eradicated so who’s to say? How about the man himself, John DeLorean…
“It’s inevitable that the company come back.”
I hope you’re right you crazy old mule!