Bay Area local, Matthew Riese went on quite a mission in July of 2010 when he set out to build his “DeLorean” hovercraft, a contraption that proved to be not quite sports car and not quite boat. A strange fusion between the two, the San Francisco, California local ended up spending enough on the project to be left in need of $5,500 for labor and materials with about 3 months of work left on the project.

The vehicle itself is based on a popular hovercraft kit and it wasn’t cheap to build, as Riese ended up spending around $160 on some 2.5 gallons of epoxy resin while spending around $120 on a 16-yard supply of 6-ounce fiberglass.

Riese also needed around $350 for a used MIG welder to bond the whole thing together, and even this was only a fraction of how much money and effort the San Francisco local invested into the build.

But no matter how large an endeavor, Matthew wasn’t hoping to reinvent the future with his hovering DeLorean look-a-like; he just wanted to see if it would work, “What I’m building isn’t a car and it doesn’t ‘fly,’ exactly, but I think it’s a step in the right direction,” explains Riese about his odd car creation.

Driven by a thumb for ingenuity, Matt Riese’s hover car was also inspired by a real production car that, thanks to a popular movie series in the ’80s became a cultural icon, “If you’re like me, when you saw the flying DeLorean in Back to the Future you thought, ‘I want one of those!'” exclaims Riese of why he chose to build the “futuristic” hover car.

DeLorean itself may not have been one of the greatest makes that ever existed in the American car canon, but if you’re anything like Matthew Riese then you’ll find a way to make something cool from something meant to be experimental!