Since NYC is the city with the worst rush hour congestions in the US, two advertising students figured out that DeLorean time machines would make the perfect means of transport in this metropolis.
The idea of turning DeLorean cars into cabs actually belonged to Michael Lubrano and Kim Yau, and it’s anything but new. The sad news is that the DeLorean cab does not exist and the chances of it becoming real in the future are pretty slim. At the time this project was created, the two were advertising students competing with others in the One Show Student contest.
As Mike Lubrano told Hyper Vocal: “Unfortunately the story isn’t as cool as it looks. This was an entry for a student advertising competition three years ago. It’s something my partner, Kim Yau, and I had entered for Nooka which was the client we had to solve for the 2010 One Show Student competition. As a very progressive brand with beautiful, futuristically designed products, we thought this was a cool promotional idea. Unfortunately the judges didn’t feel the same and we didn’t win. Also, this doesn’t exist in real life.”
Nooka, the company for which the two students created the campaign, is a fashion designer from New York that seems to give the future a lot of importance, hence the cab sign that says “Experience the future”. I can see why the judges did not like the idea. Lubrano did not use just any DeLorean, but one that resembles the famous car from the Back to the Future movies. This is a fact that is appreciated by geeks, but may not mean much to common people. The slogan the two students used is not that powerful, though, hence the decision of the judges.
Knowing that the electric DeLorean will be launched next year, it would more than nice to see some of these cars turned into cabs. Maybe a taxi company picks up the idea, even though electric cars are not yet affordable. As the two students suggested, cabs are a great way to advertise other companies, as a lot of people see them in various areas of the town. The same principle is used by trams and buses in some countries, mine included. Electric or not, the DeLorean cabs will certainly not get to generate 1.21 gigawatts.