Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
One of the most iconic cars in movie history is the DeLorean in the 1980s “Back to the Future” movies.
Thanks to 1998 Warsaw Community High School graduate Jason Alspaugh, DeLoreans - as seen in the Michael J. Fox films - can be rented for special occasions across the United States and beyond.
His business, DeloreanRental.com, has become so successful, Forbes magazine ran a feature piece on the “cultural phenomenon” Aug. 26 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/margotmachol/2025/08/26/how-delorean-time-machine-rentals-became-a-cultural-phenomenon/).
The idea for the business can be traced back to Alspaugh’s youth.
In a phone interview Thursday, Alspaugh said, “‘Back to the Future’ was always a huge movie for me, for whatever reason. Honestly, I don’t know why. That and ‘The Goonies’ - they always made me feel good as a kid, I always just thought it was cool.”
After graduating WCHS, where he played basketball under former coaches Al Rhodes and Doug Ogle, including playing on the 1996 Final Four Team with Kevin Ault, Alspaugh played basketball for a year at Ancilla College. He then earned his undergraduate and MBA from Indiana Tech University in Fort Wayne.
In 2020, he started DeloreanRental.com.
“I knew I was always going to build a DeLorean time machine for myself and I’ve been collecting parts. I’ve been in engineering a good portion of my career, even working for the Department of Defense as an aerospace engineer a short time,” Alspaugh said.
He knew of other DeLorean car owners who were renting out their personal cars. He wanted to do that with his, but he also wanted a business that was ready to go as soon as he was ready.
“So I reached out to other car owners, and they were doing something similar, but they had a couple other car owners they were brokering, but nothing on a mass scale where I’m at now, so I thought, ‘Why not build a one-stop shop for other DeLorean time machine car owners who want to rent their cars out?’ Because there’s probably 150 to 200 around the country, not that I knew all of them,” Alspaugh explained.
He started his business in 2020 with a couple car owners, but it turned out to be a bad year to begin the business because Covid hit. From 2020 to 2022, Alspaugh only had three or four DeLoreans and those were mostly rented out for events like small group birthdays as no one was really having any large functions.
“And these cars are fully functional, so you would think they were used in the movie,” he said. “So that’s how it started. It was a very slow process for me, but at the end of the day, I saw the endgame of, once things get back open, this thing should take off.”
Alspaugh began building a foundation for the company with his own website, that he built, and then started promoting the cars and what they were doing on social media.
“I don’t build the cars. I do work with builders who do build them. I just rent them. So, corporate events. You can not drive them. They’re a static display. So, birthday parties, corporate events, weddings, photo shoots, video shoots. I’ve done a Super Bowl commercial. I’ve done Facebook headquarters. I’ve done a Netflix series. You name it, I’ve probably done it with these cars. It really is pretty crazy,” he said.
The business really began taking off in 2023. He has over 80 cars now that he rents out from coast to coast, and even some cars overseas in places like England, Germany, France and Australia.
Rental costs depend on location and the amount of time the car will be at the function. When Alspaugh brokers the car rentals, he does receive a finder’s fee, all so that people can “live the dream.”
He also gets to keep living his own dreams. He’s worked with the cast of the “Back to the Future” films like Christopher Lloyd, who played Dr. Emmett Brown and was known for saying lines like “Great Scott!”
“People always say don’t meet your heroes. That’s not true with me and meeting the cast. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, they’ve all been so wonderful to me over the last few years, the times that I’ve been with them. Just over-the-top nice,” Alspaugh recalled.
Living in the Chicago area, he said they do a couple comic cons with the car in their booth.
“We’ve got the huge clock tower behind us and then the DeLorean time machine,” Alspaugh said. “And then the cool thing is, these cars really drive. They’re real cars, they’re just made to look like the movie car. So we’ll do ride-alongs as well, like if it’s a birthday boy or girl, we’ll do a ride-along, let them hop into the passenger seat, but we won’t allow anybody to drive.”
The cars are 40 years old and are a lot different from today’s cars, including that they don’t have airbags.
Besides the DeLorean, Alspaugh has branched out into other famous movie vehicles. He now offers Batmobiles, Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park.
“So I’ve kind of branched out on the website, offering more vehicles than just the DeLorean time machine, but our bread and butter is the DeLorean time machine,” he said. “If people are wanting it, then I’m generally searching out owners to add to my roster.”
On social media, he’s said he’s getting 40-50 million views per month. Just on Facebook last month, he did 42 million views.
All of this is while he has a full-time job, a wife and children.
“I have a lot of this automated, so all of my social media posts, I use a website that automates all of them. So, utilizing ChatGPT, utilizing this website, I’ll take about 30 minutes of every Sunday or Monday, and I’ll populate my week out. There are different websites that allow this, so you basically go out and it connects to all of your social media and you place a picture and a description and you tell it what time you want it to post. So I’ll do that for every day so that I don’t have to just sit out there and post. So it’s all automated for me like that,” Alspaugh explained.
He does handle every single rental quote himself, but he’ll do that in the evenings and it’ll only take him about 10-15 minutes whether that’s online or by phone. It is a full-time job, he said, but it just doesn’t take up all of his time.
“I enjoy working. I enjoy where I’m at right now, what I’m doing right now. I’m a senior project manager for a very, very large company in the Chicagoland area, and I love what I do. But it’s nice having that side business that I never, ever, ever anticipated literally blowing up and then Forbes wanting to write an article. To me, that’s the pinnacle and, granted, I did a Super Bowl commercial,” he said, pointing out that his website has a list of his clients that he’s rented cars to.
“The type of reaction this car gets ... if you go get gas in the car, expect an hour. People are just losing their minds seeing one of these, it’s just wild. But it’s awesome. You could have told me when I was in high school that I would be working with DeLorean time machines or own one or any of that, and I would have said there’s a better chance of me walking on the moon. It just wasn’t a real thing to me, it wasn’t a possibility to me,” Alspaugh said. “And I’m very proud to be from Warsaw, Indiana. Granted, I’ve lived in Chicago since 2011, but I’m extremely proud of (being from Warsaw).”
