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up vote 34 down vote favorite
1

Why not use 89, maybe 100 miles per hour? Is 88 the fast 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 with this number. So why was it 88 MPH?

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35  
I'm guessing because the led display would seem more dramatic if all the lights were lit up and since 88 is the number that would do this, it was what was chosen. – OghmaOsiris Apr 13 '12 at 20:24
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Must be for the yards per second metric - I see 42 in there. – Iszi Aug 17 '12 at 6:06
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@OghmaOsiris - I think you can even take this explanation in-universe. Imagine that the speed is arbitrary - you fix it by changing variables in the machine...Doc has to come up with an arbitrary large speed, and since he's using an LED display for the spedometer, he decides it would look cool. We know that Doc has a flair for the dramatic anyhow. – Chris B. Behrens Sep 27 '12 at 16:54
@ChrisB.Behrens: precisely. Because it’s cool. – Paul D. Waite Nov 30 '12 at 14:20

3 Answers

up vote 53 down vote accepted

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 supped up, or that time travel is impossible. Or even just it needs to be turned up to 11 to get time travel.

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3  
so many cars of the 1980s had speedometers that only went to 85, that the case for "up to 11" is strong. – JustJeff May 2 '12 at 0:05
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That's because in 1979, the NHTSA made a regulation limiting speedometers to 85 MPH (as well as special emphasis on 55, which was the national speed limit at the time). – dan04 Jun 17 '12 at 23:05
@JustJeff : :) I can't resist... about the "up to 11": xkcd.org/670 – woliveirajr Aug 28 '12 at 12:02
up vote 39 down vote

I think that the answer is in four parts:

  1. It had to be fast enough to be dramatic without being extreme.

  2. OghmaOsiris may be right - 88 would completely fill an old style LED display.

  3. Eighty-eight has a certain alliterative/poetic rhythm to it.

  4. The number 8 is the symbol for infinity rotated 90 degrees.

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up vote 3 down vote

I had heard once that when they were designing the 5th-wheel coupling between 18 wheeler's tractor unit and the semi-trailer, it was observed that the design actually had an unstable transverse (sideways) mode of vibration which would become dominant around 88mph. At that speed, the semi-trailer starts swinging to left and right behind the tractor unit. This usually results in loss of control and crash. I think they got the number from there if not from the more appealing "infinity at 90 degrees!" one :D

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1  
Any evidence other than you "heard this"? I've heard a lot of stuff. – Mark Beadles Nov 29 '12 at 17:22

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