In the popular teenybopper song Year 3000 (If you don’t know the song, just ask any 12 year-old girl), the Jonas Brothers’ pay homage fabled Flux Capacitor of the Back to the Future fame. Car and Driver ranked the unmistakable time machine based on John DeLorean’s revolutionary aluminum skinned, rear engine American sports car as number four in its countdown to the number one most famous movie car.

John DeLorean is an America’s automotive legend. He was the youngest person ever to be appointed as Chief Engineer for General Motors Pontiac Division and subsequently, the youngest to head that Division. After leaving GM, DeLorean started on the path that would ultimately make his name a household word and the DeLorean DMC-12 a legend.

Beginning in 1981, the DMC-12 was assembled in a plant in new Northern Ireland that was built specifically for the task. The body of the DMC-12 was designed by automobile legend Giorgetto Giugiario of Ital Design and the suspension by Lotus founder, Colin Chapman, using the Lotus Elan chassis as the base for the car. The prototype DMC-12 went through several engines, including a Citroen V4 and a Ford V6, before it received a 2.8L Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6 in the production model.

One of the interesting facts about the DeLorean was that it was a Rear Engine, Rear Wheel Drive car that was built at the beginning of the front wheel drive craze. But the engine position and the Lotus chassis were the extent of "normal" features on the DMC-12. The body was designed in two parts, a fiberglass underbody (insulated with a special type of foam for safety) and a #304 stainless steel skin covering the fiberglass.

The chassis was coated with a special enamel to prevent rusting also, but the coating was put on too thick at the factory resulting in cracking, allowing water to seep through, defeating the coating’s purpose and worsening the potential for rust. The most eye-catching design element of the DeLorean is the exotic gull-wing style doors. The doors used technology so sophisticated that it was also used on space shuttles and jet fighters. The 90-pound doors are self-opening, powered of pistons mounted underneath.