Back to the Fuchsröhre

It’s 5pm on a sweltering summer’s evening in the Eifel mountains. I lean over the engine bay of my DeLorean, deeply questioning my life choices. Right now the Eurotunnel train I’m meant to be on is choo-chooing its way out of Calais. And I’m 300 miles away in the Nordschleife overflow car park – sweat pouring off my brow, fingernails black with that unknowable engine gunk – contemplating a car that won’t even start let alone run as it should.

‘Live the Dream’ said the marketing materials in 1981. Well, I came here to share the dream. To send the crowd at Brünnchen into raptures, as they capture the impossibly rare sight of a DeLorean four-wheel drifting, tyres aflame, en route to a sensational flat-out glory lap. A new Nürburgring record for the marque, a forever line in the sand. A time starting with eleven… Okay, so we were not going to be troubling Stefan Bellof’s famed lap record in the 1983 1000km, but nor is this a slick-shod 650bhp, ground effect prototype factory Porsche. It’s a DeLorean.

But even this arbitrary yet hopelessly ambitious target has proved elusive in the two packed Touristfahrten days here so far.