US auction website charitybuzz.com retails a number of things online, from jewellery to holiday trips and Zoom meetings with celebrities. It also has a list of charities where people can bid for a variety of items to the benefit of these aid organisations.
Currently on its charity tab listings is a delightful piece of automotive history — a replica of the DeLorean DMC-12 used as a time machine in the Back to the Future movie franchise. It’s being auctioned off for the assistance of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which was started by the actor who starred in the movies and suffers from Parkinson’s disease.
Doc Brown’s and Marty McFly’s iconic car, which is making a comeback using modern parts, isn’t one of the original movie cars but is equipped with a mock “flux capacitor”, the part that enables time travel in the story, including giant vents on the back and “time circuits” in the cockpit.
The stock car is powered by a rear-mounted 2.8l V6 mated to a three-speed automatic transmission driving the rear wheels. The auction site reckons it can sell this replica for a whopping $500,000 (R7.2m), after the original movie car sold for $541,000 at a charity auction in 2011.
Some refurbished examples sold by the still operational DeLorean Motor Company, and fitted with five-speed transmissions, will set you back $70,000.
The online auction, which includes other Back To The Future memorabilia, ends on April 15.
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