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Electric Dreams
It's Back To The Future Day, and these students have celebrated by rebuilding an electric De Lorean
The rebuild of the iconic stainless steel sports car took 18 months.
TODAY IS BACK To The Future day. You’ve probably heard a bit about it.
Wednesday 21 October 2015 is the day Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and Doctor Emmett L Brown (Christopher Lloyd) travelled from 1985 in their flying De Lorean time machine into the fictitious Hill Valley, California of the future in the 1989 movie Back To The Future 2.
Much has been written about what the movie got wrong and right about the future (and it got an awful lot right), but students at Queens University Belfast have been marking the date in their own special way – by rebuilding a De Lorean as an electric car.
Between 1979 and 1983 car engineering legend John De Lorean established the production facility for his stainless steel sports car in Dunmurry, Belfast, one which created 1,500 jobs at a time of extreme recession. The project would eventually end in utter financial failure – but the car itself has become a legend, not least because of its key role in the movie trilogy.
“The car has links to Belfast,” Dr David Laverty, of the school of engineering at Queens, told RTE’s Morning Ireland today.
There’s a lot of nostalgia around the car. We though ‘why not?’, it’s perfect to represent Belfast. It taps into that idea of dreaming of the future, it’s inspiring.
The electrical De Lorean, the first of the cars to be produced in Belfast since 1983, was officially unveiled today at the Ulster Museum in the city.
It’s the culmination of an 18-month rebuilding project.
Rebuilding the car has been like putting together a “giant, rusty, very hard jigsaw puzzle” Brian Moorehead, masters student at Queens, told Morning Ireland.
“While building it, we’ve heard from so many people who used to work in the factory, or people who worked in the docks and saw consignments of the car shipping to america,” he said.
So many Belfast people have childhood stories about seeing the cars on street when they were younger.
It’s ranked as the number one most famous movie car. It’s a fantastic car and still a trendsetter today.
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