Hailing from Belgium, Brian Brocken is an instrumentation technician specializing in both electromechanics and automation. As a hobby, he picked up a junked robot arm built in 1999—so old that the 2-ton arm actually ran on floppy drives. Once used as a welding robot at the Eurostar train factory in Austria, by the time Brocken acquired it, the mothballed machine had dead internal batteries and a defective controller.

Using his skillset, he revived it, turning the relic into a workable CNC milling machine. The next question was, what should he use it for?

Simple: Build a full-size replica of the DeLorean from "Back to the Future." One that flies. "I saw the 'Back To The Future' movie again one night and thought that would be a great project," Brocken explains. "The model would be made out of EPS foam so it would even be light enough to maybe fly. So I started designing the model and did some calculations and it turns out to be actually feasible."

Brocken started the project in 2023, and here's where he's at now:

The wheels even freaking tilt!

Incredibly, getting the thing to fly wasn't the hard part; by using predominantly EPS, Brocken got the weight of the body down to 14kg (about 31 lbs). Four 3000W motors each driving a 30-inch propellor are enough to get it off the ground.

The harder part was much more prosaic: The door hinges, which are driven by a linear actuator. "The automatic door hinge design for the gulwing doors was probably the most complicated design part of the whole build (so far)," Brocken explains. "This is the part I spend the most time on. I didn't want the hinges to show on the roof of the car, I wanted an off-center hinge that's completely concealed inside the roof and door itself, similar to real car doors."

Brocken also had to figure out how to allow airflow through the vehicle, so that the propellors could do their thing. He thus designed a system of louvers. "I didn't want 2 gaping holes in the front and the back so I made a flap-system connected to a linear actuator through mechanical linkages. This way the blades are concealed when the flaps are closed and allow air to enter inside when they are open."

Brocken has been documenting the project as he goes. Here's his latest build video, where he shows his aluminum rig for flying tests, the louver system, how he got the wheels to tilt, and more:

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By the end of the project, Brocken better get an invitation for an all-expenses-paid trip to one of those Universal Studios theme parks.