The DeLorean DMC-12 Is An Outlier’s Legacy

“There was a guy who lived up the street from me who had one,” Geoff Ombao remembers of his boyhood. “And every time he drove by, it was like watching Santa Claus driving the ice cream truck.” Santa’s ice cream truck, in this instance, was a DeLorean DMC-12, a stainless steel, gullwinged car that–thanks to the Back to the Future film franchise–would be forever associated with time travel in the popular imagination. For Ombao, however, the car’s appeal lies in the marque’s short-lived, tumultuous history.