Last Car to the Future
What do future car concepts tell us about the future? (image: Ramak Fazel).
“Uh, well, it’s a DeLorean, right?” says Marty McFly, 19 minutes into the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future. The car makes its on-screen debut rolling out the back of a steaming lorry, as the camera sweeps around to catch the logo emblazoned on the front. When the gull-wing door swoops open, it releases thick smoke, aping Doc Brown’s wispy mane as he stumbles out. Zany adventures ensue. Plus two sequels.
Counterintuitively, there’s not a whole lot of “future” in Back to the Future. The first instalment spends most of its time in 1955 – nostalgic reverie for the yuppie classes. The second jumps to 2015, before darting back to a dystopian 1985 and then 1955 again. As if bored by what the future has to offer, the third film leaps back to 1885, for an aesthetically made-for-TV romp through the Wild West.
The trilogy tells us a lot about how the way we look to the future has changed. The 1950s could be considered the 20th-century highpoint of techno-optimism. While Marty and Doc feel compelled to hide their DeLorean for fear of shocking people, it might not have seemed so strange: mid-20th century American car companies were pumping out future-car concepts such as General Motors’s jet-plane-esque Firebird series. By the 1980s, however, the US had suffered economic decline, two oil shocks and the Vietnam War, while terrorism, HIV and the crack epidemic loomed on the horizon.
Malaise about the future hasn’t improved much since then, with Silicon Valley in particular promoting a brand of escapism. Take Elon Musk. On 21 November 2019, he unveiled his latest project, the Cybertruck[1]. While DeLorean allusions abound in its stainless-steel panels and profile, it has a unique viciousness. Features like Tesla “armor glass” (which failed to resist a steel ball lobbed at it during the premiere) and a bullet-resistant body – as well as the timing of the event in the month, year and city in which the dystopian Blade Runner is set – suggest Musk’s hope for the future is murky.
In contrast, Back to the Future’s DeLorean has none of this ambiguity. It takes an already impressive-looking car and endows it with superpowers. Off the big screen, the DeLorean was a stunning flop – with only 8,563 built before the Delorean Motor Company filed for receivership in February 1982 – but this didn’t matter when set against its incredible futuristic appeal. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, the car boasted several unusual features – gull-wing doors, a stainless-steel body and rear- window louvres – that made it stand out.
In the movies, the DeLorean was a vehicle for time travel, but its real value was escapism – a revelry in the good old days when people were optimistic about the future. Since the DeLorean, few cars have had much futuristic appeal, with automotive companies instead churning out retro rehashes not too dissimilar from the film industry’s obsession with reboots. On that note, Robert Zemeckis has been adamant that the Back to the Future trilogy will not get a redo. That’s probably a good thing: Elon Musk’s Cybertruck would make a sad stand-in for a time machine.
1 A note from the future: after years of delays, a Cybertruck was spotted in the wild last week doing laps of the test track at Tesla’s Fremont factory. Meanwhile German suppliers have reported that Tesla has placed an order for production machinery destined for a Cybertruck assembly line. But given how many of Musk’s predictions for the future haven’t come true (see: robotic taxis, Mars colonisation, owning Twitter etc.) we won’t hold our breath.
Words Brendan Cormier
This article was originally published in Disegno #26. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.