A recent image posted on social media has taken the internet by storm, drawing the attention of car enthusiasts and 1980s sci-fi fans alike.
This post in question has gone viral after Reddit user u/my_chaud1 shared a photo of an allegedly abandoned DMC DeLorean car parked in front of a Chinese restaurant located somewhere in Anchorage, Alaska.
The post was shared on the subreddit r/AbandonedP*rn and was aptly captioned "Abandoned DeLorean outside an abandoned Chinese restaurant courtesy of Anchorage Alaska," amassing over 25,000 upvotes and 761 comments in just a day.
As expected, many Reddit users took it upon themselves to express their surprise in the comment section.
"Who abandons a DeLorean???" wrote a shocked user.
"One of my stress dreams is buying a sports car, forgetting where I parked it [and] never seeing it again. This picture hurts to look at," commented another.
The DMC DeLorean was originally popularized by the 1985 hit film Back to the Future, which depicted the car being used by the main characters as a time machine.
Since then, many enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to restore the DMC DeLorean as both a tribute to the film and to the now-defunct car manufacturer. Popular Mechanics magazine estimates that these restorations can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the condition of the car in question.
Considering the DeLorean's ties with pop culture, a few comments left under the original post involved time-travel-related jokes.
"I actually use it all the time, you just can't tell because it's always returning directly back to the same time and place in your linear view of time," wrote a commenter with a fitting username, TimeTraveler2036.
"Yeah, it looks as though it's driven from time to time," added another user jokingly.
Some users also appeared to be taken aback by the relatively good condition that the abandoned car was in. "Do you know how long it's been abandoned? Looks fairly clean, cobweb free, and the tires appear to be in pretty okay condition," wrote one Reddit user.
One Back to the Future fan saw this an opportunity: "Since 1885," he replied, referring to the franchise's third instalment, which saw Marty McFly travel back in time to that particular year.
"It ran out of plutonium," joked another user.
On a more serious note, the OP (original poster) shared that the car had apparently been "under a pile of snow for the last six months," though they estimated that the DeLorean in question had been there for "about a year, maybe more."
A number of other commenters also sowed doubt as to whether the Chinese restaurant that the DeLorean is parked outside of was indeed abandoned. "I drive by that place weekly and it [doesn't] look abandoned to me," wrote one user. "Came here to say that. The owner clearly just keeps it there for storage," shared another.
According to motoring magazine Auto Express, the DeLorean Motor Company only managed to produce approximately 9,000 DMC DeLoreans before going out of business in 1982. Meanwhile, USA Today estimates that of those that were manufactured, around 6,500 models are still on the road.
This wasn't the first time that a story about a seemingly abandoned piece of history has taken the internet by storm. Newsweek wrote about how an 11-bedroom mansion in New York state that had been left uninhabited since 1927 has recently been put up for sale for $495,000. The mansion was constructed in 1895 and will reportedly require millions of dollars to restore.
Newsweek reached out to u/my_chaud1 for comment.
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