The Ultimate DeLorean

Some cars, like James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 or Ferris Bueller's Ferrari 250 GT, will be forever recognized for their movie roles. None more so than the DeLorean DMC-12, which has become so deeply associated as Doc Brown's time machine, it's entirely possible that kids today don't even realize it was a car first.

It's virtually impossible to look at the front end of this car without seeing the blue lightning arch across it as Marty approached 88 mph while running away from the Libyans, who must've had an amazingly fast VW Microbus to keep up.

And the back? The louvers are right on target for a car designed in the late 1970s and produced in the early eighties, and somehow they still feel wrong without Mr. Fusion sticking up from the motor.

The interior was actually fairly advanced for its day, even if the speedometer didn't quite reach 88 mph.

Sporting gull wing doors usually found on high-buck exotics and a stainless steel look that predated your kitchen by 2.5 decades, the DeLorean had an appearance that was as anachronistic driving down the street in 1983 as it was in 1955 and is in 2014. Maybe Doc knew what he was doing after all?

The shape of the door meant having a "normal" window was more of an engineering hassle than it was worth, but it resulted in a rather ingenious diet program: there is no way you can fit a supersized meal through that window.

Not bad for a car that fought against Detroit's big three automakers and nearly pulled it off.

Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He's a little obsessed, but not in a sitting-outside-the-dealership-at-3a-with-binoculars sort of way. He undergoes track withdrawal symptoms on a regular basis and writes about cars as a salve, and you can follow him on Twitter @aaron_m_miller.