Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machines by Bruce Coulombe

Bruce Coulombe is a former NASA engineer who now builds DeLorean Time Machines.

There are a lot of people who think that the car from the movie ‘Back to the Future’ was specially built for the movie – a bit like the Batmobile. But the car is a DeLorean DMC-12 manufactured by the DeLorean Motor Company in Northern Ireland between 1981 and 1983.

The cars were already cool, but then Back to the Future came along:

There’s a lot of customisation, both inside and outside of the car. I know because I used to own a DeLorean and back in the summer of 2003, a company in South Korea called up and asked if they could feature my ‘Back to the Future’ car in their Christmas Hollywood Car Show. They’d pay for the car to be shipped to Seoul, fly two of us over and pay our hotel. I looked at my stock DeLorean and said “sure, I’ll do that!”.

I’m not sure the car show people knew the difference between a stock DeLorean and a Back to the Future car, but I was pretty sure the people who paid to see it would figure out something wasn’t right.

I spent the next few months frantically trying to source components that would transform my car. I even designed a set of working time circuits and had a local electronic company make ten – then sold nine on EBay, including one to Japan, which I thought was kinda cool.

Luckily I found Bruce in Florida, USA, who was making a load of the internal components, including the Flux Capacitor and Plutonium Gauges. So by the time my car was collected, it did at least resemble the Back to the Future car – purists would look now and I’m sure pick it to pieces.

Since those early days, Bruce has become an expert and premier builder of Back to the Future time machines. And whenever I’m in Florida, I visit to see what he’s working on. Here’s Bruce’s own car outside the workshop.