‘Back to the Future’ Car Auctioned for $541,000

One of the seven DeLorean DMC-12 cars used in the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy of films has raised $541,000 at auction – flux capacitor and all.

The big-money sale at the ‘Profiles in History: Icons of Hollywood’ auction in Beverly Hills comes a week after another piece of movie memorabilia, Citizen Kane’s Oscar statuette, sold for $861,000. If the car hadn’t appeared in the science-fiction adventure classic, its value would barely scrape $30,000. According to Hemmings, part of the winning bid will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

In the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy, the DeLorean was used as a time machine, and quickly became an iconic part of a movie series fondly remembered by 30-somethings everywhere.

Indeed, the DeLorean itself is enjoying something of a resurgence. Back in October, the DeLorean Motor Company of Texas (a new company set up in 1995 to buy old parts of DeLoreans) announced it would manufacture an electric version of the car, partly made from said old parts.

But get this: the DeLorean wasn’t even the biggest sale at the auction, because the racing suit worn by Steve McQueen in legendary racing film Le Mans sold for $984,000 (!). That’s not far from the price paid for the Porsche 911 McQueen drove in the same film – that fetched $1.25 million at an earlier auction. Profiles in History described the suit as “the Holy Grail of racing film costumes.”

[Via Hemmings]