A MAN who collects DeLorean cars has transformed the classic Back To The Future vehicles into a monster truck, a limousine, a hovercraft, a convertible and a Time Machine Replica. Rich Weissensel, a software engineer, is fanatic about the two-door sports car and owns five custom creations – including a stretched DeLorean Limousine - and three stock DeLoreans. Rich has re-modeled the stainless-steel shape of the iconic cars into bizarre and brilliant automotive creations in an ongoing, 14-year series of projects. The projects started after Rich met the car's founder John DeLorean at the Cleveland DeLorean Car Show in 2000 and showed him some of his ideas and sketches. Rich from Chicago, Illinois, built a custom hovercraft using the stainless steel panels of the DeLorean and a hovercraft cushion which allows the DeLorean to float over any surface.
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MotorTranscript
00:00Hi, my name is Rich Wiesenthal and these are my DeLoreans.
00:17From a limousine to a hovercraft and even a monster truck, Rich Wiesenthal has taken
00:22his DeLorean obsession to a new level.
00:25Crazy?
00:27Absolutely.
00:28I would say without a doubt, DeLorean crazy.
00:31Rich from Chicago began creating his radical custom cars after meeting founder John DeLorean
00:3814 years ago.
00:40I met John DeLorean at one of the DeLorean car shows.
00:44I showed him some of my sketches and I told him I'd like to build something like this
00:48and probably thought I was a little bit crazy but he said if you think you can do it, go
00:52for it.
00:53Inspired, the 50-year-old set about turning his creations into a reality, starting with
00:58the biggest of them all.
01:00This is my DeLorean monster truck and this is what it sounds like when I fire it up.
01:11Even though it's pretty big, it actually only took me a month to build it.
01:15Built it back in 2002 using a wrecked DeLorean and a wrecked K5 Blazer.
01:22We married the two bodies together, body and chassis, and we did some upgrades including
01:30a 12-inch lift kit.
01:32And the building didn't stop there as his new creations came in all shapes and sizes.
01:37The DeLorean limousine is 26 feet long.
01:40It's got three sets of gullwing doors so you have six fully operational gullwing doors
01:45on there and that's never been attempted as far as I know on any kind of limousine, probably
01:51for good reason.
01:52They're very difficult to try to get everything lined up exactly right.
01:57He may be aggressive with his designs, but Rich employs a code of conduct.
02:02The DeLorean enthusiast will only use damaged cars for his creations.
02:06I use them primarily because there were so few DeLoreans actually built that I do not
02:12want to remove the good ones from the population.
02:16So I wait till I get damaged cars and I use them for the projects as I come up with them.
02:24As Rich drives his DeLorean into the distance, he's already planning his next amazing car
02:30conversion.
02:31My DeLorean projects are kind of like kids, so it's difficult to pick a favorite.
02:37I have so many different ideas for custom DeLoreans.
02:41I'm not sure if time, money, or my eventual age stopped me from building them, but as
02:50long as I'm able, I will continue to build them.