Happy Back to the Future Day!

Written by Mick Bolognese | October 21st, 2015

If you’re on any type of social media, you’d know that today is ‘Back to the Future’ day – the day that Marty McFly lands in in the classic first instalment of the Back to the Future film trilogy.

The car that Doc chose as his time machine, back in the mid-80s, was a DeLorean DMC-12 (there’s one on display in the museum – come and see it!) Back then, if you needed a futuristic, quirky machine to propel you 30 years into the future and still look stylish when you landed, a DeLorean was definitely an excellent choice. So we asked ourselves the question: if we had to make a time machine out of a 2015 car, which would we pick?

These were our top 3 (check them out in the gallery):

3. The Renault Twizy

The Twizy is a cheap single-seater electric ‘quadricycle’ that has been for sale in Europe for around two years, attracting quite a bit of success. There’s a demonstrator model in Australia at the moment, but it is yet to reach our market. Rechargeable from a simple household electrical outlet, it has a maximum range of around 100 kilometres between charges. It’s a bit of a blend between car and motorcycle, and you can park three of them in a conventional parking space. In the world’s increasingly overcrowded cities it seems like the way forward – look out for vehicles like these to be a common sight on our roads in 30 years.

One setback? The declared top speed is only 50 miles per hour (about 80 kph)… so sparking that flux capacitor might be a problem.

2. The Pagani Zonda Revolucion

OK, this one is nothing like the Twizy at all. It has a 6 litre V12 petrol engine that pushes it to 100 kph in just 2.6 seconds. It’s loud, fast, bold and everything about it screams supercar. Reaching Doc’s magical figure of 88 miles per hour will be an absolute breeze, and as much as technology may change in the next 30 years, nothing will stop this car from being desirable in the foreseeable future.

So what could stop you using it as a time machine? Probably the price tag, which is over $3 million…

1. The Tesla Model S P85D

Tesla has made a bigger impact on the car market than any other newcomer in recent memory. Building all-electric cars that people buy en-masse is already quite an achievement, but to actually make them compete with supercars for performance is amazing.

But that’s exactly what the Model S P85D does. It reaches 100 kph from stationary in under 3 seconds. It used to be a bit more than 3 seconds, but then a firmware update made it quicker. That’s right: download a quick update and your car becomes a supercar. If that’s not Back to the Future worthy, we don’t know what is!