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.
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MotorTranscript
00:0002.
00:03But Parker Brothers' concepts in Florida, the aid restriction is imagination.
00:10Their client list includes celebrities and Hollywood movie studios.
00:24Mark and Shannon Parker design and build incredible concept cars, custom motorbikes and stunning
00:31drivable recreations of the most outlandish movie vehicles.
00:36007 007 Somebody comes to us and says I want a car
00:42with some rims and a ground effects and a paint job and 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.
00:59Shannon'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 and 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 it's a little more difficult than that, everything we build is drivable
01:22so then I have to come up with a way of taking his idea and his inspiration and kind of turning
01:27it into something that's actually functional.
01:29It's really kind of a back and forth, we have to tweak it a little bit because a lot of
01:33times when I draw it, it's too far out there and he has to kind of rein me back in a little
01:38bit but it's that collaboration that 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.
01:55But the most stunning is the Assault Tumbler from The Dark Knight Rises.
02:01We had to build every inch of this from scratch, the frame, the chassis, the body, the interior,
02:07the suspension, the wheels, the glass, I mean pretty much all we could buy was a motor
02:13and it was pretty tricky.
02:15Now the whole chassis and body is a tubular chassis and it's all steel construction, not
02:21roomy inside but it's pretty comfortable actually, it drives out really well.
02:27We had to add a lot of little cameras, there's a lot of tiny little micro cams all over it
02:32and there's 7 or 8 video screens on the inside because there are a lot of blind spots.
02:38The gas mileage on this thing is not the greatest, 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 so what we had to do was put the motor in backwards.
02:53So the motors 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.
03:20Normally we can't get over about 30 miles an hour with it because all the people around
03:24it, it's kind of hard to go fast when you're being crowded in but if you wanted it to,
03:27you could definitely 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 we
03:37get 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, it'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.
03:55When people have to stop what they're doing as they're driving down the road, yeah, we've
04:00done something right.
04:13The brothers aren't sure how much they spend building the Tumbler but how much would they
04:17be prepared to sell it for?
04:20I 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, I mean, why
04:31would you get rid of it?
04:32What, are you crazy?