How trustworthy are auto dealers in 2015 Hill Valley?

[Turd Ferguson]

Simple question. I recently rewatched the trilogy and kept my eye out for little details. One detail I kept my eye on was the odometer on the DeLorean throughout the trilogy. After Doc is shot and Marty takes off to escape the Libyans, the odometer on the time vehicle reads 33,061. OK. Great. Doc didn't buy the car new, only slightly used.

Fast forward to Back to the Future Part III. When the locomotive is pushing the DeLorean and the first presto (?) log explodes, we catch a glimpse at the odometer and it reads 33,278.

Huh.

So in the time that Marty left Twin Pines Mall in part one till it gets destroyed by the train in 1985 the DeLorean is only driven 217 miles. How can this be? Doc obviously went on adventures before coming back to pick up Marty and Jennifer to bring them to 2015. He was around in the future long enough to have hover conversion done, have the car registered with future tags and was gone long enough to require Einstein to be put in suspended animation. Then, it struck me. The engine doesn't register mileage driven while flying!

So, if you're a random car shopper in 2015, how do you know a slightly used 2010 Tahoe with hover conversion and 50,000 miles on the odometer hasn't flown across the Pacific a few times? That 50,000 miles could easily be 500,000 miles! And people think car dealers and shady these days!

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

The DeLorean is the exception.
Every other car in 2015 has GPS which works in flight without problem.
Also a hover drive/engine might not suffer so much from mileage that it makes a difference.

 

[David cgc]

Maybe there's a second odometer on the hover-system. The classic drivetrain and the flying parts seem to be pretty much independent, anyway, so having them both use the same odometer wouldn't tell you much about the wear-and-tear.