Back To The Future’s DeLorean has almost vanished from UK roads

Forty years on from the film that made them immortal, there are just 303 DeLorean cars left on Britain’s roads.

To mark the anniversary of Back To The Future, released in 1985, online auction platform Collecting Cars nabbed the latest figures on their use from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

In addition to the 303 taxed for use on Britain’s roads, another 114 have statutory off-road notification – meaning they are likely gathering dust in garages.

Just four years before the film’s release, 9,000 DeLorean DMC-12s rolled off the company’s assembly line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.

But the company collapsed into insolvency the following year and the cars have since become a collector’s item.

‘We don’t need roads’

Collecting Cars has only sold two in the past six years, and reckons a fully restored version could fetch £80,000.

If you found one that could really take you back in time to 1981, you’d find it was going for around £18,000.

The auctioneer’s chief executive Edward Lovett said a combination of scarcity and Back To The Future’s unending popularity had pushed prices sky-high (not that the real cars can actually fly, alas).

The film version of the DeLorean famously took off at the end of the first film, when Christopher Lloyd’s time-traveller Doc Brown uttered the immortal words: “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Back To The Future spawned two sequels and has a popular musical in the West End, while reports suggest it could form part of the Universal Studios theme park announced for the UK this month.