A rickety Chevy Malibu sedan cruises from Los Alamos, New Mexico, to the California desert, where it is pulled over by a policeman. Despite warnings from the car’s shifty driver, J. Frank Parnell, the officer opens the trunk, and is vaporized by a mysterious, radioactive blast. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, California, a disillusioned grocery store stock clerk named Otto is fired for insubordination, and his punk-rock girl friend, Debbi, kicks him out of bed to have sex with her new mate, Duke. Otto blames society for his failures and sees little hope for his future. Sometime later, he is approached by an older gentleman named Bud, who offers to pay him $25 for assistance in moving his wife’s car. When Otto grudgingly agrees and drives away in the vehicle, the real owner gives chase, and Otto realizes he has been swindled. However, he follows Bud to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, a shady yet legitimate operation that repossesses cars from delinquent debtors. Otto denounces the “repo men’s” exploitation of people who cannot keep up their car payments, and turns down an offer for more work, even though the office receptionist, Marlene, reminds him that he is already on the payroll for earning $25. Hoping to find a more credible source of income, Otto asks his parents to make good on their promise of $1,000 in return for a high school diploma. When his somnolent father declares that the family savings have been entrusted to a televangelist, Otto returns to the Helping Hand to become a repo man under Bud’s tutelage. One day, Otto meets a girl named Leila, who is part of an underground network of renegades trying to prove the existence of extraterrestrials. Wielding a nondescript photograph, Leila explains that the image shows four dead aliens recently smuggled from the Los Alamos Air Force base by a scientist named J. Frank Parnell in the trunk of his Chevy Malibu. However, the car has gone missing, and the network has spearheaded a search party to locate the aliens in time for a press conference that will alert the world to life in outer space. Otto remains skeptical, but he later sees Leila’s photograph on the cover of the National Enquirer, and a Helping Hand colleague named Miller declares that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are really time machines. Back at work, Otto helps Bud search for a vehicle that has a particularly high repossession value, and traces its origins to the used car lot of Lagarto and Napoleon “Napo” Rodriguez. The Rodriguez brothers are notorious for selling Helping Hand’s repossessed vehicles at low cash prices and extremely high-interest loans, making the cars easy prey for repo men and keeping them in constant turnover. Bud scorns the scam and vows to seek revenge. Meanwhile, the Rodriguez brothers conduct a secret meeting with Helping Hand receptionist Marlene. Finding a “wanted” poster that offers $20,000 for the missing Chevy Malibu, she offers to give the brothers a percentage of the reward if they find the car. Although Napo and Lagardo agree to the deal, they toss the poster out the window, where it is found by their nemesis, Bud, who embarks upon his own mission to claim the reward. Otto telephones Leila to tell her about the car, unaware that the line is wiretapped by an eccentric alien-seeker named Agent Rogersz. She and her team of investigators have been following the case since the policeman was vaporized. Afterward, Rogersz tracks down Leila, and they join forces to find Otto. In time, J. Frank Parnell arrives in Los Angeles and drives to a gas station. Sickened from his prolonged proximity to the so-called aliens and their radioactive corpses, Parnell steps out of his Chevy to vomit, and the Rodriguez brothers steal the car. When they stop at a public telephone booth to contact Marlene, however, the car is snatched by a gang of three liquor store thieves, led by Otto’s former girl friend, Debbi. Later, Debbi and her partners, Duke and Archie, come across the disoriented Parnell, who, determined to reclaim his car, challenges them to look in the trunk. As Archie is vaporized, the others run away. Meanwhile, Bud and his colleagues, Miller, Oly, and Lite cruise the streets, seeking vengeance against the Rodriguez brothers. Unaware that the brothers have cornered Parnell and the Malibu, Bud confronts the siblings with a baseball bat and Parnell gets away. The next day, Bud is fired, after Oly reports that the brothers have threatened to file a harassment lawsuit against Helping Hand because of Bud’s actions. Elsewhere, Otto spots the Malibu and chases it on foot until Parnell stops the vehicle and offers him a ride. Parnell tells Otto about a “friend” who invented the neutron bomb and got a lobotomy after realizing the consequences of nuclear war. Soon after, Parnell dies from radiation sickness. Otto drags his body out of the car and drives back to the Helping Hand lot. Fearing a rift in his mentorship with Bud, Otto leaves the Malibu behind to search for his friend, unaware that Bud lies in wait to steal the car for himself. After hiding the vehicle, Bud reunites with Otto, and they go to a liquor store where Debbi’s partner, Duke, is committing armed robbery. A shoot out ensues, and Bud is wounded. Otto returns to the Helping Hand and finds Marlene being detained by Agent Rogersz’s henchmen. As Marlene breaks free, Otto is captured and tortured to reveal the car’s location. However, Marlene and the Rodriguez brothers come to his rescue, and they race to Bud’s hospital room, unwittingly leading the agents to the one man who knows the Malibu’s whereabouts. As a chase is underway, Bud remains bed-bound, watching the televangelist who brainwashed Otto’s parents. When the false prophet asks his disciples to recover the Malibu, Bud sneaks away and drives the car back to the Helping Hand lot with his pursuers in tow. There, Otto tries to broker a deal with his mentor, but Bud wields a handgun and is shot down by a helicopter sniper. As Otto holds his dying friend, the car emits a force field of blinding light that deflects men in radiation suits and sets fire to the televangelist’s Bible. However, Miller breaks through, and although the Helping Hand mechanic does not know how to drive, he climbs into the car and invites Otto to be his passenger. The Malibu levitates, darts across the Los Angeles skyline, and blasts into outer space with its two unlikely time travelers.