FLY DMC

THE CULT OF DELOREAN - THE MAN. THE MACHINE. THE MOVIE(S)

- CHRIS BEATTIE

My one and only personal experience of DeLoreans was at the Gold Coast Motor Museum when I filmed a segment on the museum’s DeLorean exhibit for Unique Cars. I sat in the car while museum curator Carl Amor warned me not to push the big red button in the centre of the dash (the roadside warning light switch). Naturally I pushed it and the editor of the piece then used some special effects to make it appear that we had activated the dreaded ‘Flux Capacitor’ that sent the car spiralling through time to who knows where. A bit corny I know, but so was Back to the Future, although not so the car that was made famous by the movie.

It wasn’t the only movie the car featured in – 2019’s Framing John DeLorean, a dramatised documentary starring Alec Baldwin as DeLorean, delves into the murkier side of the man and his many exploits within and without the auto industry.

Much like John DeLorean, the car he graced with his name remains somewhat of an oddity in a world in which standing remains somewhat of an oddity in a world in which out from the crowd, is now made so much harder by impenetrable layers of bureaucracy that dictate what cars should look like and how they should behave (or “comply” in bureaucrat-speak).

Back in the early ’80s when the first DeLoreans saw the light of day, there had been much publicity (not all of it good – see REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE sidebar) and anticipation about what its creator would release, given his considerable experience as a barrier-busting automaker in the USA.