This Guy Made A DeLorean Hovercraft So You Don’t Have To

By Nick Venable | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Pop culture is littered with beloved vehicles, many of which are nearly as iconic as whoever was originally driving them. If I had to choose my top five — and I don’t, but I will — I’d pick the Mystery Machine, the Batmobile, Ecto-1, the bus from Speed, and the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Not that I think the latter is an attractive car, but I like the idea of using time travel in order to rock my balls-out rendition of “Johnny B. Goode” for high school crowds, since I just look weird doing it now.

There have been many instances of people using DeLoreans to evoke the neo-nostalgia of the BTTF films, but Santa Rosa, California’s Matthew Riese has combined the famed car with another snazzy gadget, Marty McFly’s hoverboard, and created a hover car. Meanwhile, I can’t even build a box with Legos.

Back in 2010, Riese launched a Kickstarter fund to pay for the construction and modifications needed to finish the project, which he’d been working on for years. The car isn’t an actual DeLorean, it’s only modeled after one. And it doesn’t go 88 mph, but it does speed along at a swift 45 mph, and looks like a blast trying to “hit the brakes,” which just sends the craft flying all over the place. It’s registered with the California state DMV as a boat, and its illegality in the street is why he’s keeping these trials strictly on the water.

I don’t much care for fishing, but it would be amazing to get out in the middle of the water on one of these. I wonder how well a flux capacitor would work as bait.