By now, it feels like Back to the Future tribute cars are a bit played out. The first movie has been out for over 40 years, so seeing yet another Doc Brown impersonator at my local Cars & Coffee isn’t exactly mind-blowing for me now, like it was 25 years ago when I watched the movie on VHS in my parents’ basement for the first time.
But as we approach the flying car tech Back to the Future Part II promised us, clever people seem to keep coming up with new ways to enthrall nostalgic fans. The latest case in point is a man named Brian Brocken. The 24-year-old instrumentation technician from Belgium has built a full-size replica of a DMC-12 that can actually retract its wheels and hover in the air.
Brocken has been documenting the progress on his flying DeLorean for the past year on his YouTube channel and his personal blog. The body is made from EPS foam (the generic version of Styrofoam, which is a trademarked brand), and was cut using an ABB IRB6400, an industrial-scale robot arm built in 1999 that Brocken bought broken from a train factory in Austria and converted into a CNC machine. Something tells me he and I would be friends.
The body had to be cut in pieces, because a huge, single block of foam couldn’t fit on Brocken’s CNC table. All in, the assembled shell weighs just 30.6 pounds—pretty good for something that looks like something you could get in and drive. From Brocken’s blog:
The front and back-end (also the middle part) is completely hollow to reduce weight and also to alow for air-flow, because yes it is supposed to fly. The hood consists out of individual slats/blades that will rotate open to alow for air-flow and closed to conceile the drone/rotor blades underneath
To give the Delorean some more durability, the EPS foam will be coverred in a layer of fiberglass with a weight of 25 gr/m² which is commonly used for RC-planes. The fiberglass will add a little bit structural integrity but it’s main purpose is to protect the EPS foam. This will also alow the model to be painted as paint would currently dissolve the EPS-foam.
Source: Brian Brocken on YouTube
In the second video, Brocken designs the mechanisms for the fully automatic gullwing doors and builds an aluminum airframe to test out the quadcopter design that’ll be hiding beneath the DeLorean’s foam body. That louver system for the front hood can open and close via the push of a button, thanks to a series of hinges connected to an electrically operated strut.
After a full year between updates, Brocken finally published another video on the DeLorean to his channel earlier this month. It covers the assembly of the final frame, which now uses carbon fiber. In its first test flights, the frame kept twisting, causing the entire assembly to spin counterclockwise. So Brocken added two diagonal wires connecting each corner, which solved the issue beautifully.
Source: Brian Brocken on YouTube
The video below also shows how Brocken built the mechanism for the wheels, which can rotate in the rear for ground propulsion and turn at the front, so it can function as a normal car. Those mechanisms can also retract the wheels into the body so they face downward, like in the movie car. Does this stuff add precious weight? Sure. But it’s also entirely necessary for this whole gimmick to work.
Towards the end of the video, we finally get to see the life-size DMC-12-shaped foam take to the skies (and by skies, I mean about 10 feet above the floor of an enclosed warehouse). While the DeLorean does little more than hover in place, I’d still consider this a massive achievement, seeing as how much engineering work was put into this thing. It’s especially satisfying to see the wheels rotate downward as the car tip-toes through the air.
Source: Brian Brocken on YouTube
Obviously, there’s still plenty of work ahead for Brocken. There’s a lot of fine-tuning for the flight controls needed, plus the body still needs its doors and rear hatch area added on. The whole thing still has to be fiberglassed and painted, too. How Brocken will replicate the brushed steel through paint, I’m not sure. But no matter how it looks, I’ll be keeping a close eye on his channel.
Top graphic image: Brian Brocken / YouTube
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“1.21 Gigawatts!”
I heartily approve of ‘medium sized dog’ as a unit of measurement.
Also, can we assume that that giant orange robot arm of his has a name? There’s no way you’d buy, repair, and use something like that (as a hobbyist) and not name it. Size alone dictates it should be Otto, or Thor, or Ralph, or something?
Of course: impressive work well beyond my means. 🙂 There’s a guy on Youtube (of course there is) who doesn’t do this, nor is nearly as clever, but some of his videos are funny: he suspends a biggish thing (witch riding a broom, monster, etc…) by fishing line from a drone and then, with the drone at a higher altitude but dangling the prop, uses it to prank people outdoors.
Let me see if I can find it…
Here it is… Tom McCabe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EivGotYowPw
Some of the reactions might be set-ups, but no matter.
Again: not a tenth as impressive as a flying styrofoam DeLorean, but it’s amusing (to a simpleton like me). 🙂
I’m imagining it on fire. It’s pretty cool.
Thank you for saying this. Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies, and I bought a DeLorean because of the movie, but I’m NOT making it into a movie replica. There are already plenty of them out there.
Can you imagine how every aspect of this guy’s life for the last year+ has been covered with foam dust, clinging to every surface via static electricity.
Very cool project but I could not deal with that.
Including his lungs, possibly. This guy’s been exposed to as much styrofoam dust in one project as The Bishop was in his entire education.
Deleted.
Fiberglass is heavy for something like this. Hell, at this point even the paint is heavy.
Yeah a lot of BTTF stuff is overdone, but this is seriously cool. Since the doors open, I wonder if it will have a fully detailed interior? Working lights? I imagine all of that would add weight though, so I don’t know
In the unpainted state it looks more like the Chevy Malibu from the end of Repo Man
always-intense-1679096604.webp
A perfect movie.
It really is
Society made me what I am.
That’s bullshit. You’re a white suburban punk just like me.
Yeah, but it still hurts.