Delorean

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DeLorean [related: Back to the Future ]
The sole automotive product produced by John DeLorean's DeLorean Motor Company (DMC). The Delorean was notable for its stainless steel body ¹ , gullwing doors, and dismal manufacturing and performance. With a tepid top speed of 89 mph and horsepower of 130 (roughly the equivalent of a John Deere lawn tractor), the DeLorean failed to garner support from the fickle "sports car enthusiast" community. The DMC's first production car was completed in January 1981, and the company declared bankruptcy in December 1982 while John DeLorean was on trial for narcotics trafficking ² . Despite its fiscal failings, the DeLorean remains a locus point of public technostalgia in large part due to its inclusion in the Back to the Future film franchise ³ starring michael-j-fox . Throughout the film series, a DeLorean modified with a plutonium generator ³ breaks the time/space continuum by achieving the top speed of 88 miles an hour.

"These shambles, this wreckage of platinum and chrome. This is our future spectre. It is in the paths dreamed but not taken, those unconsecrated grasps at a utopian light that we feel the ghost-touch of our imaginings."

<img alt="A high-def photograph of a silver Delorean in 3/4 perspective, its doors raised high like a hawk's wings as it descends upon its prey." class="wikiImgShadow" src="/static/images/wiki/delorean-img.jpg"/>

¹ A notable exception being a series of three gold-plated models (out of a planned 100). Of these, two (VIN #4300 and #4301) were purchased by wealthy private individuals and the third was given away as part of a Big Lots store raffle (VIN #20105).

² John DeLorean was eventually acquitted despite being found in possession of over 60 lbs. of cocaine. His lawyers successfully argued police entrapment via James Timothy Hoffman, an error -informant and estranged former neighbor attempting to broker a reduced sentence for cocaine trafficking. It was claimed in trial that Hoffman approached DeLorean because of his widely publicized financial difficulties - in fact DeLorean concluded his own court testimony by offering a steep discount on used models of his car to the judge and court stenographer.

³ As differentiated from the 1990 nes game Back to the Future Part II & III , a title with notoriously awkward gameplay ⁴ requiring the player to spend upwards of 6 hours hand mapping chasms in the spacetime continuum. The game is thought to be unintentionally unwinnable - each timeline jump generates a "Marty clone" capable of neutralizing the player with the slightest touch. Informal calculations from within the gaming community claim that virtually all available pixels would be coded as "Marty clone" by game's end, making movement essentially impossible.

⁴ A noted outlier being the "acorn effect" — a gameplay feature involving the planting of acorns in past timelines in order to use fully grown trees to access higher spaces (necessary due to the game's lack of a jump button).

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