Custom Car Creations: Brothers Build Incredible Replica Movie Cars
TWO BROTHERS are building and driving custom cars straight out of the MOVIES. Marc and Shanon Parker have a street-legal Batman Tumbler, Optimus Prime and Ecto-1 parked inside their shop in Port Canaveral, Florida. The duo started their business four years ago, and already have an incredible fleet of cars straight out of movies like Batman, Transformers and Ghostbusters.
Transcript
00:000001- When someone says it can't be built, we got to build it.
00:040002- At Parker Brothers Concepts in Florida, the only restriction is imagination.
00:080003- First rule at Parker Brothers is if we're going to build it, it is going to be
00:12a drivable vehicle.
00:130004- Their client list includes celebrities and Hollywood movie studios.
00:170005- I only see this kind of stuff in movies. It's awesome.
00:230006- Mark and Shannon Parker design and build incredible concept cars, custom motor bikes,
00:29bikes and stunning drivable recreations of the most outlandish movie vehicles.
00:40Somebody comes to us and says, I want a car with some rims and a ground effects and a
00:44paint job.
00:45And we're like, that's boring.
00:46You know, we want to show people that you can do things that have never been done before
00:51and push the envelope a little bit and create things that are kind of iconic.
00:56Shannon's the designer, I mean, he comes up with these ideas.
01:01A lot of his inspiration, I think, comes more from comic books and movies, and he'll come
01:06up with these just really outlandish ideas, and then bring me a drawing and go, hey, let's
01:11build this.
01:12And I'll look at it and go, what were you thinking?
01:15He thinks if he can draw it on paper that I can build it out of metal.
01:18Unfortunately, you know, it's a little more difficult than that.
01:21Everything we build is drivable, so then I have to come up with the way of taking his
01:25idea and his inspiration and kind of turning it into something that's actually functional.
01:29It's really kind of a back and forth.
01:31We have to tweak it a little bit because, you know, a lot of times when I draw it, it's
01:35too far out there, and he has to kind of rein me back in a little bit, but it's that collaboration
01:40that makes the vehicles turn out so cool.
01:43As well as concept and custom builds, they also make replicas of famous movie vehicles,
01:48including Optimus Prime from Transformers, the Shredder from Battleship, and Ecto-1 from
01:54Ghostbusters.
01:56But the most stunning is the Assault Tumbler from The Dark Knight Rises.
02:01We had to build every inch of this from scratch.
02:03The frame, the chassis, the body, the interior, the suspension, the wheels, the glass.
02:10I mean, pretty much all we could buy was a motor, and it was pretty tricky.
02:15Now, the whole chassis and body is a tubular chassis, and it's all steel construction.
02:21It's a little bit roomy inside, but it's pretty comfortable, actually, you know, and
02:26it drives out really well.
02:27We had to add a lot of little cameras.
02:29There's a lot of tiny little micro-cams all over it, and there's seven or eight video
02:34screens on the inside because there are a lot of blind spots.
02:38Yeah, the gas mileage on this thing is not the greatest.
02:41You know, it does have a Corvette engine in it.
02:44Because of the shape of it, there's not enough room to put the motor in the front where it
02:48would normally go.
02:50So what we had to do was put the motor in backwards.
02:53So the motor's here, and the transmission is actually inside the vehicle, and that runs
02:58into a gearbox that drops down, and then the drive shaft comes back underneath the motor
03:04and back to the rear end.
03:06The turbine here, which we originally had hooked up with a propane system to blow flames
03:12out, but we realized that that was dangerous and stupid, and a lot of people almost got
03:18hurt, so we disconnected that.
03:19Normally we can't get over about 30 miles an hour with it because all the people around
03:24it.
03:25It's kind of hard to go fast when you're being crowded in, but if you wanted it to, it could
03:27definitely move because it's got a good engine in it.
03:30How can you go wrong?
03:32This is just one of the coolest cars that was ever even dreamed up, so occasionally
03:37we get to take it out and drive it around and have some fun with it.
03:40When I first saw the Tumbler, I thought it was just the coolest thing, and I think it's
03:43awesome that it actually has a New York City Gotham tag on it.
03:47It's really, really cool.
03:48If people can look at that and go, oh, that's nice, but keep passing by, we probably didn't
03:54do our job right.
03:55If people have to stop what they're doing as they're driving down the road, yeah, we've
03:59done something right.
04:12The brothers aren't sure how much they spend building the Tumbler, but how much would they
04:17be prepared to sell it for?
04:19I really, I personally wouldn't sell it.
04:25To me, it's that cool, and it took that much time and effort to build it, so why would
04:31you get rid of it?
04:32What, are you crazy?