Okay, so we still need roads where we’re going, but at least we’ll be able to get there in a brand new DeLorean DMC-12!

Last year, on October 21, we celebrated Back to the Future day—the “future” date to which Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel in the second installment of the trilogy—and of course, found ourselves comparing our tech to that in the movie. And while we don’t yet have a Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor or a food hydrator for our tiny pizzas, we do have a surprising amount of the technology imagined in the film, albeit in primitive forms. The Hendo hoverboard really hovers, Nike’s working on those self-lacing shoes, and Google Glass is a pretty good stand-in for (improvement over?) Marty Jr.’s video glasses. And now, thanks to a small service-center-turned-manufacturer, we can add to that list the DeLorean! Minus the time traveling…

Although the original DeLorean Motor Company went out of business in 1982 after only selling a few thousand cars, the dream of making it a viable vehicle was kept alive by Stephen Wynne and his Texas-based DeLorean Motor Company—no relation to the original. Although Wynne’s business has only centered around servicing DeLoreans already on the road up until now, with the passage of the 2015 Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act, companies are now allowed to build replica vehicles that wouldn’t have previously passed safety muster, as long as fewer than 325 are built each year.

Wynne has taken this opportunity to transform his business from servicer to manufacturer, and says he will start producing one new DeLorean a week. The price point for the iconic car is pretty hefty however, around $100,000. But c’mon, it does have doors that, as Russ Hanneman would say, “go like this.” The powertrain for the original DeLorean, the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6, is also out, because, while safety standards have changed for low-volume production models, strict emissions standards are still in place. The newly built DeLoreans could go all-electric…on less than 1.21 gigawatts of course.

We won’t hold our breath for the flux capacitor.

What do you think about Wynne and company’s effort to restart production of the DeLorean DMC-12? Are you ready to go back to the future from the past, or should the DeLorean remain a cinematic fantasy? Let us know in the comments section below!

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HT: Ars Technica

Image: Ian Weddell / Flickr