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In the first movie, they had the Delorean rev up with the emergency brake turned on and the speedometer revved up close to the magical 88mph. What I'm wondering is why they didn't just have the car do a brakestand to 88mph instead of trying to drive the Delorean to the same speed?

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    My guess is that it's related to the velocity of the car, rather than the speed. I always thought that the speed of 88mph had to be accompanied by a direction (Velocity is a Speed and a Direction), that's why Marty always had to drive the Delorean in a straight line.
    – Jamie Taylor
    Commented Jul 23, 2012 at 8:06
  • Related question on Science Fiction & Fantasy: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/50913/23386.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Feb 28, 2014 at 13:33
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    Yes it was not just an odometer reading they wanted, the actual object of the car had to be moving at 88mph.
    – sanpaco
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 17:03
  • @sanpaco Relative to what? ^_^
    – eirikdaude
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 9:18
  • Huh? If it was just a matter of making the dial read "88" they could have just flicked a switch instead.
    – Django Reinhardt
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 1:46

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The car had to reach a velocity of 88 miles per hour. It had nothing to do with the speedometer hitting 88 miles per hour.

In the animated series episode Gone Fishin` Jules Brown (one of Doc Brown's sons) places a spare flux capacitor in a barrel. When the barrel falls over the waterfall and reaches 88 mph, the flux capacitor activities and moves Jules Brown through time (and space) before crashing at the bottom.

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    +1, when they push the car with a steam engine in the third movie they don't care of the speedometer at all.
    – sharptooth
    Commented Jan 23, 2013 at 14:37
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    @sharptooth the speedometer would work even if the car was being pushed
    – JoelFan
    Commented Aug 26, 2013 at 21:27
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    @sharptooth They did in fact care about the speed (and thus indirectly) the speedometer in the third movie. When they tried pulling it with horses, Doc had rigged up an external speedometer for them to read while they were driving the horses, and is why he made the explosive logs, to give the steam engine the extra OOMPH! to get it up to the needed 88MPH.
    – eidylon
    Commented Feb 28, 2014 at 18:27
  • When you move in space, you're moving in time too. It's a fact.
    – Magno C
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 17:55

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