Doctor Emmett Brown

The vote has now ended.

Who better to discuss time travel in a luxury sports car than the Daily Expresss Motoring Editor, Nat Barnes?

Is there any question that the best screen scientist should be Doctor Emmett Brown from the Back to the Future films?

Face facts, building a time machine has to be one of the most challenging scientific achievements to undertake. Someone as narrow-minded as Spock would probably dismiss time travel as 'illogical' and the best that Q from the James Bond films can manage is revolving number plates and ejector seats - oh, purleeese.

That most famous of time travelers, Doctor Who, provides some stiffer competition, but just look at his mode of travel - a bright blue police box that hasn't been seen on our streets since the 1950s. Which would you rather have, that or the best looking time machine ever produced – that DeLorean? As Doc Brown puts it in the film: "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?".

Even better, Doc Brown never allows his genius to stagnate. At the start of the Back to the Future films, the DeLorean runs on plutonium – hardly the most environmentally friendly fuel around. However, back in 1955, he develops the car to convert the energy from a bolt of lightning and, by the end of the film, it's even running on household waste – even Ken Livingstone couldn't find fault in that form of transport.

And not satisfied with only building a time machine, Doc Brown even manages to find time to pay homage to his scientific forebears, naming his dog Einstein and with the giant-sized amplifier that blows Michael J Fox off his feet. Take a close look at the number under the amp's on-switch, it says CRM114, the same as the message decoder on the B52 in Dr Strangelove.

Doctor Emmett Brown is the best candidate here, a natural genius with a spark of wit and more character than most scientists could find in a petri dish. He even has the right haircut.