When you think of iconic cars from the 1980s, the DeLorean is probably at the top of the list. Despite its fame from being featured in 1985’s “Back to The Future,” the model is exceedingly rare. This is because the car was only produced between 1981 and 1982, with only 9,000 being made before the company filed for bankruptcy.
Earlier this month, an original 1981 DeLorean was found. A score of the century considering it has all its original parts, and the odometer only reads 977 miles! The 42-year-old car was being stored in a barn in Wisconsin where it had remained undriven for almost 20 years.
Michael McElhattan, the owner of Illinois car restoration company DeLorean Midwest, soon got wind of this treasure via a phone call from New Mexico.
“He said he would go out in the barn and just look at it, cause he thought it was a really cool car,” McElhattan said. “It happened pretty quick, because once I found out the car was close, and it was a low mileage car, I was excited to go take a look.”
He quickly got in contact with the original owner’s nephew, who was looking to sell this piece of automotive history. So McElhattan and his social media coordinator Kevin Thomas made the trip out to see this rare treasure.
“We open it up, and the first thing I saw was a mouse go running across the center console,” McElhattan explained. But even with the mouse infestation, the car is still in surprisingly good shape considering its age. Even though he did not indicate the condition of the flux capacitor.
“The condition of the leather, the condition of the instruments cluster in the dash, and a lot of places where you see sun damage, and that’s one of the big killers on this – this car virtually has no sun damage,” he said.
This fact leaves him hopeful he can restore the vehicle. “To take a car from this condition to what I know we can do with it, is just, that’s an adventure anybody wants to be on,” McElhattan said. Some car restoration seems like a small price to pay for the ability to time travel.
