"Wait a minute, Doc," an incredulous Marty McFly says to Dr. Emmet Brown in a memorable scene from Back to the Future. "Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?"

If you've seen the movie, and who hasn't, you know that Doc did, and so has Ken Kapalowski, complete with flux capacitor and fusion generator.

The Burlington man says BTTF fans are always thrilled to see his 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 modified to look just like the one in the movie that transports Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, to 1955 from 1985. Kapalowski recently cruised down to New York City in it for a cast reunion marking the film's 25th anniversary.

"It's incredible," he says. "People swerve from their lanes and hang out their windows with their camera phones, honk and give us thumbs-up. People love it."

Great Scott! Has it been 25 years since Back to the Future was released?

Yes, but it's still 1985 for Kapalowski, who, unlike Marty, has no qualms about disrupting the space-time continuum. The 31-year-old has been reliving 1985 since he first saw the movie at the age of 8.

"My good friend Peter was the first one who showed it to me," he recalls. "We must have burnt out a couple of sets of VHS tapes just watching them over and over again." Kapalowski estimates he's seen the film and its two sequels at least 100 times each.

"For some reason, Back to the Future resonated and just became this obsession when I realized you could actually buy a DeLorean. Ever since I was 8 years old I kept telling everybody 'I'm going to get a DeLorean when I'm 21' and they're like 'yeah, yeah, whatever, keep dreamin'."

Kapalowski had a DeLorean, of which only 9,000 were ever built in 1981-82, by his 21st birthday. His obsession has cost him about $25,000 and countless hours spent looking for and installing the 1960s aircraft parts that made the car look like a time machine built by a mad scientist.

"I've been working on it intensely for the past six years and I'm still not finished," says Kapalowski. "It's a labour of love."

Kapalowski may never come back to the present. He's having too much fun heading a club of DeLorean owners, organizing the first-ever convention for Back to the Future fans this month in California, making appearances with his car to raise money for Team Fox and the Michael J. Fox Foundation to help fight Parkinson's disease and, best of all, meeting Fox and other BTTF stars.

"All the people I've idolized, I finally got to not only meet them but basically spend a few days with them," Kapalowski says of his trip to the recent reunion. "It was really cool. They're all very, very lovely people."

MARIANNE TAKACS
STAFF REPORTER
The Toronto Star

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