In "Back to the Future," a DMC DeLorean is converted into a time machine. The stainless-steel sports car is modified by the eccentric scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown, who fits it with a flux capacitor and other equipment.
The DeLorean was produced by the DeLorean Motor Company from 1981 to 1983. Its gull-wing doors and futuristic, angular body made it look unusual enough to suggest an alien spacecraft to people in the film's 1955 setting. That visual quality helped screenwriter Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis choose it after earlier concepts involving a refrigerator were abandoned.
The movie's fictional time machine reaches temporal displacement at 88 miles per hour and requires 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. The car is often called a DMC-12, but DMC-12 was mainly a pre-production designation rather than the official marketing name. Another common mix-up is thinking the car itself generates the time travel: the vehicle provides mobility, while the fictional flux capacitor enables the temporal jump.