Back to the Future’s Iconic DeLorean Was Almost Something Totally Different

It’s hard to picture the famous DeLorean from Back to the Future as anything else. In such a popular and iconic franchise, where Marty McFly and Doc Brown are time-traveling, it just feels like it had to be a car. But funny enough, that wasn’t the original plan, which makes it even more surprising. Then again, considering the whole story wasn’t even expected to get a sequel and had already been rejected multiple times, it makes sense that the script went through several changes to get it just right. But how exactly did that happen? What was the original idea?

Time machines take all kinds of forms in fiction. In Doctor Who, it’s a telephone box. In the 1960 classic The Time Machine, it’s basically just a chair. There aren’t many limits on how they can look – but a fridge? Yes, that’s exactly what Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale had in mind. Marty would have to climb inside, the fridge would be loaded onto a truck, and then a nuclear explosion would power it up and send him back in time. That’s a lot of steps – and honestly, it would have been too goofy for the tone of the movie. Maybe even confusing. Even though the whole idea was just that Marty would be hiding from the explosion, it was still a weird setup. But there was an even bigger issue – kids watching the movie.

What were the chances that some kids might try to recreate what they saw on screen and actually climb into a fridge? Back then, a lot of refrigerators had safety latches, meaning once they were shut, they couldn’t be opened from the inside. So it was indeed a real danger. They had to rethink the whole thing, and that’s when they came up with the idea of making the time machine a car. But not just any car, and that choice wasn’t random either. The DeLorean was a model that would soon be outdated, which meant that in the future, it would always be remembered as the car from Back to the Future. Plus, the car’s unique design – those gull-wing doors and the stainless steel body – made it look kind of like a UFO, which just fit perfectly with the story.

Of course, car companies saw an opportunity in all of this. Ford, for example, even offered $75,000 to replace the DeLorean with a Mustang. From a marketing standpoint, that would’ve been a huge win for them – kind of like how people actually believed hoverboards were real after Back to the Future Part II, and Mattel started getting flooded with calls about them. But when it came to the identity of the franchise, there was no way they were going to compromise. Gale shut it down immediately, saying, “Doc Brown doesn’t drive a f—ing Mustang.”

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However, the DeLorean was kind of a pain to work with. According to Gale, it broke down all the time. “Little things on the car would break during a scene, and we’d have to wait for the FX guys to repair it,” he admitted. They actually had three different DeLoreans for filming: one for stunts, another for special effects, and a more detailed one for close-ups. The whole point was to make it look like something Doc Brown had built himself – like a real scientist’s crazy invention. To make it even more believable, they even swapped out the original speedometer (which only went up to 85 mph, due to regulations at the time) and replaced it with one that showed 95 mph.

But at the end of the day, Zemeckis never wanted the audience to get too caught up in the technical details of how the DeLorean actually worked. Time travel wasn’t supposed to feel scientific – it had to feel instinctive and cinematic. That’s why the transition is so fast and intense (they called it the “time slice”). The idea was to make it look like the car was violently tearing through reality itself, rather than just smoothly disappearing. And honestly, it worked. That effect made the time travel scenes – and the DeLorean itself – even more unforgettable.

In the end, it isn’t just a movie car – it’s a piece of entertainment history. The original DeLorean used in the films is now on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, standing as proof of the creativity and innovation behind the Back to the Future phenomenon. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the most reliable car, but it still became one of the most legendary vehicles in pop culture.

The Back to the Future trilogy is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.