time travel - In Back to the Future, why was the speed 88 miles per hour?

Why not use 89, maybe 100 miles per hour? Is 88 the fastest a DeLorean can go? In other metrics, I have:

Miles per hour         88.00    [mph][mi/h]

Miles per second        0.0244  [mps][mi/s]
Yards per second       42.944   [yps][yd/s]
Feet per second       128.832   [fps][ft/s]
Kilometers per hour   141.3648  [km/h][kmh][kph][kmph]
Kilometers per second   0.0393  [km/s]
Meters per second      39.3     [m/s]
Knot                   76.3931  [kn] nautical mile per hour
Mach Speed              0.1155  [Ma] (speed of sound)
Light Speed             1.3110e-7 [c]

There does not appear to be anything special about this number. So why was it 88 MPH?

Answer

As you can see here the original set of DeLoreans were fitted with speedometers that went up to 85 MpH:

A picture of a DeLorean dashboard; the dial speedometer goes up to 85mph / 140kph.

Further evidence on Wikipedia supports this.

The fact it needs to reach 88 MpH may be an indication that the DeLorean is souped up, or that time travel is impossible. Or even just it needs to be turned up to 11 to get time travel.

Comments

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