Callum Bowen at the wheel of his DeLorean. Photo: James Coleman.
Callum Bowen can’t exactly remember the first time he watched Back to the Future.
“I genuinely don’t have a clear memory of seeing it,” he says.
“I guess maybe it’s just one of those weird movies that left such an impression, it was beyond one single memory. I’ve got about 17 different iterations of it now at home.”
You might know the Canberra public servant, and his wife, Brooke, for dressing up as ‘Doc Brown’ and ‘Clara’ at the annual Canberra Festival of Speed, and again last weekend at the Lego fan event Canberra Brick Show.
Callum (or should that be Doc Brown?) at the Canberra Brick Show. Photo: CBR DeLorean, Instagram.
This year marks the 40th anniversary since the first Back to the Future film was released, and the Canberra Brick Show marked the occasion by inviting the couple to bring along their car.
Apart from going on to become the highest-grossing film of 1985 – and then remaining a classic in entertainment lore ever since – Zemeckis’s trilogy also saved this particular car from fading into obscurity.
You know the one – the DeLorean.
I’m standing in front of one in an empty Westfield Belconnen carpark (fans of the film will get the ‘Twin Pines Shopping Mall’ overtones). Or the ‘CBR DeLorean‘, as it’s known on Instagram. Complete with a flux capacitor on the back shelf.
“So, about 15 years ago, I’d worked up a whole tonne of leave, and went across to the US for a road trip,” Callum explains.
“Top Gear was really big at the time, so I started looking around for cheap, classic American cars – like Mustangs or Lincoln Continentals – to take. But in the back of my mind, I’d always wanted a DeLorean.”
The story of the DeLorean Motor Company is a rollercoaster. It was founded by John DeLorean, a former engineering student, general manager of Pontiac and life-insurance salesman, who went on to annoy his bosses at General Motors to the point he parted ways and started his own car company in 1973.
The styling, complete with its gullwing doors and stainless steel panels, was penned by Italian Giorgetto Giugiaro (the same man behind the original Volkswagen Golf and BMW M1), but while it looked gorgeous, the same couldn’t be said for how it went.
Initially, it was planned to have a Ford V6, but it ultimately featured a combined effort from Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo in the form of an underwhelming 2.8-litre V6. Together with the shocking build quality, this set the DeLorean up for failure.
Cars stacked up in the factory with no buyers, recession struck, and DMC filed for bankruptcy in December 1982. This is where the story gets wild …
Behold the not-so-mighty Peugeot-Renault-Volvo engine. Photo: James Coleman.
To pay off his debts, DeLorean got himself into drug trafficking, only to be caught by the FBI in a scheme to sell 100 kg of cocaine, worth about $24 million. He got off the charge, but the next few years were spent in court, fighting some 40 legal cases related to DMC.
“I make no bones about the fact that if it weren’t for Back to the Future, no one would really know this car,” Callum says.
“For example, there was another car called the Bricklin with a near-identical story – it looked the same, it was a gullwing. It was designed out of Canada, at about the same time and in really small production numbers, and then it just died – because it didn’t star in a multibillion-dollar amazing film franchise.”
The 1974 Bricklin SV-1, a car with a very similar history to DeLorean, only without the critical Hollywood stage. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Back in 2010, Callum came across a retired dentist selling one in Florida while scrolling through the classifieds. Some negotiating with the bank later, and one morning at 2 am, he transferred A$20,000 “to the bank account of a man I’d never met for a car I’d never actually seen in the flesh”.
“I still remember hitting send, and thinking, ‘What the f*** have I just done?'”
Shortly afterwards, he was in the driver’s seat – facing a 4500 km road trip across the US to California. And yes, it did the classic DeLorean thing by breaking down “properly” three times, one time that had the pair limping through the Utah desert.
“There are certain quirks to this particular car, so the petrol tank’s at the front, the engine’s at the back, and there’s what they call a fuel accumulator, which maintains positive fuel pressure all the way along these fuel lines and that’s like a famous weak spot – and the car just stops if that fails.”
However, he managed to complete the project, with the assistance of various DeLorean specialists along the way, and left the car with a restoration company, with the intention of importing it back to Australia.
“But I did some number-crunching and discovered I’d run out of money,” Callum says.
“So I contacted the company to sell it for me, thinking that was a fun thing and I’ll buy another one at some point in the future.”
His friends and co-workers, however, would have none of it – and set up a GoFundMe page.
“I mean, it was far from one of those noble causes like curing whales with cancer; it was just helping this guy bring his dream car to Australia, but they raised just enough money for me to ship it over.”
Build quality isn’t amazing. Photo: James Coleman.
Brooke wasn’t his wife at the time, but she too was one of the donors – a point that even made it into their wedding vows along the lines of “no, I didn’t just marry you for the car”.
“So, basically, the way I look at it is that it’s the people’s DeLorean. Everybody helped me bring it over.”
The car arrived in Canberra on the back of a truck in 2015, and naturally, refused to start at first. Even today, the air conditioning still doesn’t work, and it’s only back on the road after spending the past few months in the workshop.
Only now is he planning to address the cosmetic issues – the odd piece of cracked plastic, perished rubber seals and small dents on the stainless-steel panels.
“At the time I bought it there was a basic rule of thumb that you will spend $30,000 on a DeLorean. If you spend it all, you’ll have a decent one. If you buy a cheaper one, you’ll spend the difference on getting it up and going.”
That was then. The car is now insured for $100,000, so he has more than tripled his money (well, not counting the repair bills along the way).
“This is basically our retirement fund. I bought it at a sweet spot, and it’s climbing in value; it will only become rarer and more special as more of them are parted out. There hasn’t been a DeLorean sale recently in Australia under six figures.
“But we’ll basically hit a point when we can’t get in and out anymore – it’s really low – and then we’ll sell it to someone who will appreciate it for what it is. Hopefully, not someone who feels the need to convert it into a time machine.”
For now, he likes to take it out every weekend (at least during the window of the year when it’s comfortable enough to drive around without a heater or air-conditioner). That, and excursions to Canberra’s “geeky events”.
“We have a plethora of costumes – I’ve got three different Docs, my wife does Clara, and she’s got a hoverboard jumpsuit too,” he says.
The couple have also started fundraising for Parkinson’s disease through the Shake It Up Foundation, which is affiliated with the Michael J Fox Foundation in the US.
Callum loves the looks and smiles the “people’s DeLorean” gets. Photo: James Coleman.
There is another DeLorean in Canberra, owned by filmmaker Che Baker, who’s in the process of converting it to an EV as part of a documentary about electrification. Baker is also known for the thriller Blue World Order, which was made here in Canberra and starred six DeLoreans, including Callum’s.
“Yeah, mine was one of the ones that broke down,” he laughs.
Still, the pain – even if it’s not so occasional – is worth it, between the number of mall visitors coming over to ogle and gush.
“Just on the drive in, I had a guy just absolutely lose it going, ‘Oh my God!’, because he suddenly realised a DeLorean had pulled up next to him. You get thumbs up, you get smiles. There’s something about it that’s just so screamingly 1980s. I adore it.”
Which car would you bring ‘Back to the Future’? Let us know in the comments!
