The car’s the real star
In the market for a used car... one careful owner? MARION MCMULLEN looks back at iconic on-screen motors as the Delorean turns 40
BACK TO THE FUTURE turned the Delorean car into a time-travelling classic with a flux capacitor and a personalised number plate that read OUTATIME. The first DMC Delorean sports car rolled off the production line at the Dunmurry plant in Northern Ireland just four years earlier, on January 21, 1981. Only around 9,000 of them were produced before the company went bust, but it became a cult favourite with the release of the hit movie.
It is said the Delorean, with its silver gull wing design, was chosen for the 1985 film because it looked suitably alien for scenes set in 1955.
Back to the Future was the top-grossing film of the year and the Delorean became famous as Marty Mcfly (Michael J Fox) and Dr Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) used it to travel back in time to when his parents were in high school.
John Delorean even wrote a letter to the creators thanking them for immortalising his creation.
Three Deloreans were used during the first film, but Michael J Fox later admitted that a time machine built from a modified sports car was not the ideal mode of travel.
“I wish I had a video, a gag reel of how many times I was hit by that door, the Delorean door,” he told London Film and Comic-in 2015. “Take after take, it would go, WHACK! It was the worst thing to drive. It had two gears and I slammed the door, and my hand would smash into the flux capacitor. My hand would be bleeding, my head would be bleeding.”
Inspector Morse drove into our lives in 1987 in a vintage burgundy Mark II Jaguar. It had a top speed of 120mph and was the Oxford detective’s pride and joy.
The early Colin Dexter novels saw Morse driving a Lancia, but star John Thaw, who had played Jack Regan on The Sweeney (1974), which featured a lot of Jaguars as villains’ getaway cars, insisted that Inspector Morse would have driven an iconic British car, never an Italian sports car. Dexter was so impressed with this argument that he asked his publishers to change “Lancia” to “Jaguar” in all subsequent reprints of his novels.
James Bond’s beautiful Aston Martin DB5 came with a lot of extras including Browning machine guns, wheel-hub tyre-slashers, a bullet-proof screen and revolving licence plates in films like Goldfinger and Thunderball.
The gadgets were designed by special effects expert John Stears for the modified motor and the success of Goldfinger saw DB5 sales surge to record levels. 007 actor Sean Connery was so taken with the car, he bought one himself saying: “These DB5S are amazing.”
The epic Mini chase in 1960s movie The Italian Job has been called the best movie car scene ever. Led by Cockney criminal Charlie Croker, played by Michael Caine, the six-minute sequence featured three Mini Coopers leading police on a merry dance through the streets of Turin.
However, the famous scene where the Minis race through sewers was shot in Coventry and Sir Michael Caine could not drive at the time so is never seen behind a wheel.
His red Mini bore the number plate HMP 729G, for Her Majesty’s Prison and Croker’s prison number.
Of course, if you’re looking for a little runaround, then BBC comedy Only Fools And Horses had just the thing. The famous 1968 Reliant Regal van was bought by the BBC who painted it yellow and slapped the Trotters Independent Traders sign on it, along with the boastful claim of New York, Paris, Peckham.
The van was also fitted with a tiger-skin print interior to reflect Del Boy’s character. Sir David Jason, who played the wheeler dealer, recently called the yellow Reliant Regal “hell on three wheels” and said they had been fond of it, despite it being smelly, noisy and not very comfy.
Several motors were used over the 22-year run of Only Fools And Horses and the look was often completed by fluffy dice on the rear view mirror and a “tax in post” note on the windscreen.
Lovely jubbly.