The time machine car in Back to the Future is a DeLorean, specifically a modified DMC DeLorean. In the film, eccentric inventor Doc Brown transforms the distinctive sports car into a vehicle capable of traveling through time.
The DeLorean was chosen partly because its stainless-steel body and gull-wing doors made it look futuristic and almost alien to people in the 1950s. The car’s time-travel system includes the flux capacitor, and it must reach 88 miles per hour while receiving 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to make the temporal jump.
The real DMC DeLorean was manufactured by the DeLorean Motor Company from 1981 to 1983. It was designed by Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro and became far more famous through the film trilogy than through its brief production history. A common mistake is to call it a Chevrolet, Ford, or Pontiac; those are different automobile brands, while DeLorean is the manufacturer and DMC is the company’s name.