Forty years after the debut of the first Back to the future film directed by Robert Zemeckis, Mauto – Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile presents the exhibition Back to the future. Prototypes of time, which explores the deep relationship between two of the most iconic mass-design objects – watches and cars – highlighting their emotional, mechanical, and symbolic resonances. Through this lens, the exhibition investigates the contemporary perception of time — increasingly accelerated and fragmented by the digital age — while celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Back to the future, the film in which a car literally transforms into a time machine.

Taking centre stage in the exhibition is the iconic 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, designed by Giorgietto Giugiaro, together with a selection of sketches and ink drawings on tracing paper from the Italdesign Archive, chosen to tell the story of the creative process behind the car that has left its mark on the history of cinema and design. The car – characterized by flat surfaces, sharp edges, unpainted stainless-steel bodywork, and spectacular gull-wing doors – embodies the vision of a futuristic sports car, which has become the aesthetic expression of an era, to which today’s car designers continue to refer for its enduring modernity.

Ritorno al futuro

Taking centre stage in the exhibition is the iconic 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, designed by Giorgietto Giugiaro, together with a selection of sketches and ink drawings on tracing paper from the Italdesign Archive, chosen to tell the story of the creative process behind the car that has left its mark on the history of cinema and design. The car – characterized by flat surfaces, sharp edges, unpainted stainless-steel bodywork, and spectacular gull-wing doors – embodies the vision of a futuristic sports car, which has become the aesthetic expression of an era, to which today’s car designers continue to refer for its enduring modernity.

In addition to the car and its drawings, the exhibition pays homage to the pop masterpiece with a series of original props from the making of the film, from Bill and Patrick’s extraordinary collection: the TRW numeric keypad and the time circuit breaker, both belonging to the “Time Machine”.