As fans of the Back to the Future movie trilogy, you can bet we were excited to participate in Back to the Future Day—BTTF Day or #BTTFday in internet speak—or the day to which the movie’s main characters travel forward in time in the second movie. October 21, 2015, is upon us, and in addition to foisting upon you a history of the DeLorean Motor Company, a gold-plated DeLorean, and generally a bunch of DeLorean-related shenanigans, we also present this amazing artifact, still in the possession of our technical director, Don Sherman. It’s the jacket he was given on the first press trip to drive the DeLorean DMC-12 in Ireland in March 1981.
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If you’re thinking this is the mother of all 1980s artifacts, you’re correct. Not only is it a classic bomber jacket in style, but it reads “DeLorean” across the back. Actually, the “a” and the “n” in the name, embroidered in DMC’s signature font, both look like the letter “n,” so it sort of reads “DELORENN.” But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the jacket is rendered from what appears to be the same metallic gray leather used in the car’s interior, it has an American flag on the collar, and Don kept it for 35 years. To answer a few questions certainly burning in your mind, no, there isn’t any cocaine residue on the jacket; no, it’s not for sale; and, yes, if the free jacket was this cool, the press trip was even cooler.
-In fact, we dug through our archives and found the original itinerary for Sherman’s trip to Belfast (it’s embedded below), and the calendar was rife with fancy dinners, a flight from New York to London—and back—on a Concorde supersonic jet, a Saint Patrick’s Day night out, and a tour of the Bushmills spirits distillery. For about half a day during the six-day whirlwind, select journalists drove the DeLorean car around Northern Irish roads. Click here to read Sherman’s story from our July 1981 issue.
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- Awesome to the Max: C/D’s Coolest Cars of the 1980s -
- DeLorean vs. Chevy Corvette, Datsun 280-ZX, Ferrari 308GTS, Porsche 911 -
- In 1980, You Could Buy an $85,000, 24K-Gold-Plated DeLorean -
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Now if you may please excuse us, we’re off to grow a sweet mustache, slide some BluBlockers over our eyes, and rock the hell out of Sherman’s DeLorean swag before he asks for it back.
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