Back to the future: 'Forgotten' DeLorean found

ANAHEIM, Calif. (March 7, 2014) — Exotic car dealer Mike “Corvette Mike” Vietro and a local Anaheim automobile collector recently made a find with Hollywood connections.

They opened up a long-forgotten garage/storage unit that contained a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, according to a press release. The car — made famous in the movie franchise Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox as “Marty McFly” and Christopher Lloyd as eccentric scientist “Dr. Emmett L. Brown” — has since been moved from the garage in Temecula, Calif., to Corvette Mike's Anaheim showroom. There, Mr. Vietro said, it will be displayed, serviced “and readied for a new owner.”

Made of stainless steel, DeLoreans were produced between 1981 and 1983 by DeLorean Motor Co., founded by automobile industry executive John DeLorean in 1975. Only approximately 9,000 of the iconic vehicles were made.

Corvette Mike, based in Anaheim, is a sports car dealership that handles Corvettes, American muscle cars, and the Ferrari, Porsche and Jaguar nameplates, among others. According to its website, the company was founded by Mr. Vietro, “who fell in love with Corvettes as a teenager pumping gas in the Boston suburb of Everett, Mass.,” then settled in Southern California after serving a term in the U.S. Marine Corps in the mid-1970s.

He is described on the website as “one of the nation's most quoted Corvette authorities” and has been featured in more than 20 magazines and newspaper articles as well as several Corvette videos on stations such as Speedvision's Classics network and Meguire's broadcast network.

Every June, his website said, Mr. Vietro holds an advanced “How to buy a Corvette” seminar in Bloomington, Ill.