October 21, 2015 is a day like any other day for most of us but for movie buffs it holds some special significance.
It’s the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrived in the future after setting the controls on the DeLorean in the second installment of the popular “Back to the Future” movie trilogy.
Now turn the controls back (or ahead) on that famous car to a date in May of 2015 in Red Deer and you have the beginnings of a fund raising scheme involving a DeLorean of a different form.
“We were in a logistics meeting brainstorming for the 30th Annual Red Deer College Golf Classic,” said Greg Shannon, Development Officer-Major Gifts at RDC.
It was during the meeting when someone mentioned the start of the tournament was 1985, the same year the movie series came to light and then the talk turned to creating a DeLorean to have as a showpiece at the tournament, he said.
The search was on to find a golf cart to suit their needs but a custom made one priced out upwards of $15,000 so plan B was to make one themselves.
An old cart was located in Calgary and Dave Heykants, a man who is fixture in the car community in Red Deer, was enlisted to drive the idea from the embryonic stage to a full birth in time for the late September golf tournament.
The cart was dropped off into his capable hands and the ball was rolling.Shannon says there was excitement, anticipation and confidence but they did pop in from time to time for a peek at the progress.
“I told him after the fact that my confidence level was waning. I was looking at this thing in various stages of undress and it was a hideous golf cart anyway,” he said.
So with pieces of the cart all over the shop the image of a DeLorean was as far into the future as Marty and Doc but Heykants was on top of the job. They melded a picture of the cart and the famous car to get an idea of what could be accomplished. It was game on!
“It was a challenge and that was probably the biggest thing,” said Heykants, who customizes vehicles from his shop Dual Divisions. “The idea that people out in the community would drop my name as one who was creative enough to bring this thing to fruition. So the idea of building something totally out of the box was appealing to me.”
The initial thought from Heykants was to shoot for the stars and build a scaled-down version of the Hollywood car with all the whistles and bells, including the gullwing doors. Time was not on his side however as the cart needed to be ready for the September golf tournament. The plan was shifted into another gear with a more simple design coming to the surface.
In the end Heykants said the final product definitely looks like a DeLorean.
“If you saw it on the golf course coming at you it would look like the DeLorean,” he said. Inside the cart you have a battery powering all the lights and sound effects, including a track which can be heard in the movie.
There is also a ten inch tablet which displays the time travel programming circuitry from the movie so you can put a date on there but you won’t be able to travel back and replay a hole which didn’t go so well.
“No mulligans. You’re pretty much stuck with what you do,” he said.
The seats were re-upholstered in a metallic looking vinyl and from the seat back you will see a quarter window similar to the one the car had, decorated with what appears to be a nuclear fusion reactor. But there is more.
“The actual car in the movie, when it hits 88 miles per hour and travels through time, there are three inch wide bands on the car that light up,” he said. “We’ve actually reproduced those on the golf cart with plexi glass and LED light strips.”
Of course what would a time travelling vehicle be without the key component-a flux capacitor? This one has a version of course.
“So if two people are sitting in the cart it would be right above their shoulder so it’s kind of at eye level and it’s series of LED’s that flash towards the middle, similar to the flux capacitor in the movie.”
Now if you have a flux capacitor then of course you will need a Mr. Fusion. In the movie Doc Brown slams into a garbage can and then proceeds to load beer, banana peels and other garbage into Mr. Fusion as it was a source of fuel for the car. This model is almost to scale but operates in a slightly different manner.
“Mr. Fusion opens up to expose a cooler where you can put some cold drinks,” he said.
The cart was geared towards being a part of the annual golf tournament which raises money for the Athletic Leadership fund at Red Deer College. It’s a fund which directly benefits the student/athletes in the form of scholarships.
On September 19th there was an auction held for a lucky bidder to drive the cart during the tournament but now you can put in an offer to have that cart as your very own.
The college hopes to get for something very unique. The price tag is a mere $15,000 to $20,000.
“You can google it and only ours comes up,” said Shannon. “There’s no other such thing as a Delorean Time Machine golf cart in the world.”
It took plenty of time, sacrificing some other projects to get this one done in time but Heykants says it was loads of fun for himself, along with electrical expert Luke Evanochko and John Perrin.
“Just the opportunity to exercise creative freedom and to see it evolve. It was rewarding and entertaining and challenging,” said Heykants.
Now if he can figure out how to get a golf cart to hit 88 mph who knows what the next chapter will be in this story.
