“Holy shit. That was a DeLorean.”

“Back up.”

It was a regular Sunday afternoon and we were just leaving for our kiddo’s basketball practice. The sun was shining and it was strangely warm for early February here in the North Woods. All the road salt had been blown or washed away, so the pavement was clean and dry. Hell, another 10 or so degrees and we could have busted a convertible out of hibernation.

We were right around the corner from our house, passing a side street into another part of the neighborhood. The garage door at the first house on the side street was open. I’ve driven by that place probably a thousand times just in the almost three years we’ve lived here and I’ve never seen that door open.

That’s when I saw the left taillight. And just the taillight, because garage as storage locker. But I know that taillight. That’s a DeLorean DMC-12.

We backed up, turned in, and pulled up to the driveway. A younger woman was washing the windows by the front door of the house. She turned and greeted us.

“Wow! You have a DeLorean!” I said.

“Yeah,” she replied. “It’s been there a while. My name is Jessica. Want to see it?”

It was lovely of her to ask but I mean, really, what kind of question is that? Of course we want to see it.

The whole car, like the taillight, was surrounded by mounds of detritus. But the garage itself seemed to have stayed clean and dry over the years. As Jessica was clearly preoccupied with other projects, I knew we only had a few minutes. But here’s what I saw:

Jessica held the passenger door up (struts long dead, methinks) so I could take a peek at the interior. Oh, look! A 5-speed! Some light mildew covered parts of the seats, but there was very little musty smell and zero animal dropping stink. The dashboard looked intact and the two-knob radio appeared stock. It was hard to tell in the low light what color the upholstery was, but in my mind it was gray.

The stock (original?) Goodyear NCT tires had all lost air at their own personal paces. The small amount of stainless steel I could see – recall the extreme detritus – looked good. I didn’t get a chance to look underneath or even at the nose or most of the driver’s side of the car. Pictures would have been presumptuous.

Then we got the story. The DeLorean belongs to Jessica’s grandmother. She bought it new and drove it a bit under 5,000 miles, and then – based on the sticker on the rear license plate – parked it in 1995. Who knows the last time it was even started? Now the family is prepping the property for sale, the grandmother is moving elsewhere, and Jessica and her husband are building a house and have no time for the car.

“We’re the weird old BMW family up around the corner,” I said. “I think this would be a fantastic project.”

“You’d need to find someone to work on it, to get it running and driving. That could be hard, I guess.”

“Oh, I’d be the one working on it.”

Jessica smiled at that.

“Do you have a timeframe for when it has to go away?” I asked.

“By the summer.”

“Any idea what value you’re looking for?

“Oh, we haven’t thought about that.”

By this point, my wife Chris had popped out of our car with all of my contact information and handed it to Jessica. She said she would keep my information rather than give it to her grandmother.

Later that evening I poured a tall cocktail and launched myself right down the rabbit hole.

• Side Note 1: My colleague here at Totally That Stupid and I have a history of, shall we say, healthy obsession. One of us will decide we’re interested in a car and dig deep into the history, options, foibles, and perhaps even availability of the exact right example. At this point, I’ll usually pull back, content in the knowledge that exact example of a particular car exists. My colleague, on the other hand, frequently goes full-whack rabbit hole and brings the car home.
• Side Note 2: Get logo t-shirts made that say “Full-Whack Rabbit Hole.”

Since meeting Jessica and her grandmother’s DeLorean, I have been obsessed. I deep-dived the differences between early, middle, and late DMC-12 variations. I joined four different Facebook groups and the DMCtalk.org forum. I have begun working my way through the DeLorean Nation YouTube channel (after only seven videos it’s clear the information contained therein is invaluable). I read through several classic car website buying guides and all of James Espey’s  “Illustrated Buyer’s Guide to DeLorean Automobiles” (spoiler: it’s fascinating).

The thing is, a DeLorean wasn’t on my radar. I understand the car as a cool piece of pop culture, sure, and unfortunately also as a punchline. DeLorean originally built somewhere around 9,000 of them, and there always seem to be a handful for sale and even more being discovered in fields and barns. But I don’t recall the last time I actually saw one in the wild.

I’m pretty damn comfortable in my little BMW world, and am pretty happy with my little fleet. A DeLorean is so far off my map, but I think that’s a large part of why I’m so into it. Not into any DeLorean, but this DeLorean. This DeLorean that has a great story and deserves to be put back on the road.

Will the family be asking the moon for the car? It’s a four-digit-miles DeLorean, but it hasn’t been on the road in almost 30 years, and living ones are now spendy. Is the engine locked up, or does it have non-standard holes in the block from ancient oil and coolant? Is the clutch fused to the flywheel? The brake pads to the discs? Does anything power up? What’s the VIN? Hell, what year is this thing?

I don’t yet have any of these answers.

This is Part One of the DeLorean rabbit hole. There will be other installments if and when further events occur. For now, I’m obsessively carefully watching the driveway around the corner for signs of Jessica’s Audi.

This story has been edited to correct some of vehicle’s backstory. Also, Jessica’s name has been changed.