Made famous by Back to the Future in 1985, the DeLorean DMC-12 is one of the most iconic film cars of all time. As this auction proves however, they can be cheaper than you think.
If you’re in the market for a film cult car and can’t quite cough up the dough for a Batmobile or an original Aston Martin DB5, the DeLorean may be your next best bet, as a recent black-out version has fetched for just over US $30,000.
Clocking in at US $31,751 and with only 5,900 miles on the dash, the 1981 car is extremely well maintained. The car resided in a private museum in Nebraska from 1990 to 2018, before being sold to a private owner down the line. The car has a V6 PRV engine and has been upgraded with a better radiator, distributor, injectors and headliners. The iconic gullwing doors were also given modern torsion bars and struts to make them work better.
The engine of the car was jointly designed by Peugeot, Renault, and Vovlo, it has 130 horsepower to play with and a top speed of around 85 mph.
The relatively low auction price wasn’t just because of the lack of a Flux Capacitor, it’s to do with the cool blacked-out paint.
DeLoreans were always sold in plain stainless steel, this model was then repainted in pink before receiving the black treatment. According to The Drive, if the car was left with its base steel look, it would’ve fetched more.
Paint stands as a deciding factor in the value of DMC-12s, the brand never painted its cars but reports claim three cars exist in the world that were commissioned with a paint job. The cars were black, red, or yellow and only one of them is still untouched.
If this car was an example of the only official black DMC-12, it’d be worth a lot more The Drive insists. The seller, Performance Auto Gallery of Gaithersburg, Maryland, has previously sold a 7,000-mile car for US $41,111 as well as a 1,600-mile automatic example for US $30,250 in 2018. Another seller unloaded a similar-mileage, unpainted variant earlier this year for more than US $38,000.
If you can somehow manage to get this cult car up to 88 mph, you’ve managed some seriously cheap time travel.
