Photo by Troy Meyer
Rafael Lopez with his original DeLorean along Alexandria's waterfront.
“Cool car!”
“Are you looking for models?”
“Can I take a photo?”
Rafael Lopez, who owns one of the most-recognized rare cars in the country, is used to the questions and comments, and he is nothing but gracious about them.
“You can’t enjoy this car and be a hermit at the same time,” he said. “People will approach you.”
Lopez, who lives in the Franconia area, owns a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 — yes, the same model as the famous car featured in the Back to the Future movies.
The stainless steel body, rear-mount engine and gull-wing doors are obvious clues.
“This thing is a happiness machine,” Lopez said. “Everywhere you take it, people smile. It doesn’t matter their age, background, whether they know the name of the car or not, they know that it’s different and most of them know it’s from a movie.”
In the past year, especially, younger fans have started to stare and point. The addition of the entire Back to the Future trilogy on Netflix in 2020 has introduced a new generation to the time-travel machine.
Lopez grew up in Puerto Rico, but when he was a teenager, his mother, who was in the National Guard, transferred to Washington, D.C. They lived in Hybla Valley, and he graduated in 2003 from West Potomac High School.
“Alexandria was really my first real U.S. home and a great place for it because you have the history and you have the diversity of people here. As a Puerto Rican, my experience of diversity was Mexicans and Dominicans — Caribbean people — and that was considered ‘foreign.’ So I came here and it was like the United Nations,” Lopez chuckled.
Photo by Troy Meyer
He eventually joined the military himself and bought the car when he was 30 years old for about $32,000 from a DeLorean dealership outside of Chicago. Aside from a radio fuse going bad mid-trip, the car made the 14-hour trek back to Alexandria with no issues.
“I grew up with the movies and I wasn’t just fascinated with it because it was a time-machine car, but I thought when I saw it in the movies that it was such a cool car, so ahead of its time, and it just had such a futuristic look to it. As a kid, I grew up on NASA and space so that always attracted me, and the look just matched that attraction that I always had,” Lopez said.
Since buying the car just a few years ago, Lopez has spent about $30,000 in restorations and improvements, while keeping true to the car’s spirit.
“I’m not a purist, but I’m very much an originalist, so I try to keep the car in the spirit of the original. I don’t have any movie props on it,” Lopez said.
The car sits surprisingly low to the ground, and Lopez said he had to get used to staring straight into the headlights of today’s SUVs. It’s also underpowered for a “sports car” by today’s standards. The car’s V6 engine has just 130 hp, since it was manufactured in Northern Ireland during the oil crisis. The car, with its trunk in the front, is rear-wheel drive.
Photo by Troy Meyer
Lopez’s improvements have included a new Bluetooth-equipped radio built into the original radio’s faceplate, original factory-made DeLorean floor mats, a new DeLorean transmission and a new suspension. He had a DeLorean service company in New York do a full frame swap on the car because rust has started to form from the car’s prior life in Minnesota. He also added a remote door popper, but the car doors still fly up using the original Northrop Grumman torsion bars. Contrary to popular belief, the gull-wing doors actually need less clearance to open fully than normal car doors — they come out just 11 inches from the car when opening.
Lopez is a do-it-yourselfer for most things. His wife is endlessly patient, he said, as “quick fixes” that should take 30 minutes end up taking three hours. She drives a Jeep.
“Most of it is self-taught,” Lopez said, of the work he’s done. In his youth, Lopez worked at an auto parts store on North Kings Highway, which is no longer in business, where he learned the basics of car mechanics. The online DeLorean owners’ communities have been helpful, and both his original dealership and the New York service center have provided tools and parts. Members of the Tri-State DeLorean car club have freely given plenty of advice.
“They’re all the same car, so at some point somebody has had the same issue,” Lopez said. Between all the resources at his disposal, he said, “I’ve been able to keep this thing not just on the road but driving really nicely.”
In fact, the 40-year-old car is what Lopez drives on a near-daily basis. Before buying it, he drove primarily BMWs, which he admitted are very nice cars, but he actually prefers driving the DeLorean.
“This is fun — a lot of fun.”
DIFFERENCES FROM THE MOVIE
The DeLorean in the Back to the Future movies isn’t exactly the same as the DeLorean built as a consumer vehicle in the early 1980s. There are a few key differences:
The DeLorean’s speedometer only goes up to 85 mph, even though the car can go much faster. For the movie, designers added another line for 95 mph, allowing the car to hit the critical 88 mph needed to time travel in the movies.
“You always get the question, ‘Where’s the flux capacitor?’” Lopez said. Since time travel isn’t possible (yet), the car doesn’t have one.
While the DeLorean that Lopez drives is a bit loud, the sound effects of the car in the movie came from a Porsche 928 V8, not from the DeLorean’s V6 engine.
WHAT ABOUT HOVERBOARDS?
Today’s “hoverboards” for kids don’t actually hover above the ground — they’re typically two-wheeled, self-balancing ride-on toys that cost between $100 and $300. But a true hoverboard does exist.
Lexus developed a prototype hoverboard that floats over a special magnetic-conductive surface. Learn more about the Lexus SLIDE at discoverlexus.com/experiences/ journeys-beyond-the-road.
FLYING CARS
General Motors (GM) and Fiat Chrysler are both working on “flying cars” — also called personal aircraft. GM revealed its concept, called the Cadillac eVTOL, in January this year at the Consumer Electronics Show. eVTOL stands for Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing. The craft is not available for purchase, and as a “concept car,” may never be produced.
