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
00:01At Parker Brothers Concepts in Florida the only restriction is imagination.
00:04At Parker Brothers Concepts in Florida the only restriction is imagination.
00:09The first rule at Parker Brothers is, if we are going to build it, it has to be a drivable vehicle.
00:13Their client list includes celebrities and Hollywood movie studios.
00:21I only see this kind of stuff in movies, it's awesome.
00:2401. Mark and Shannon Parker design and build incredible concept cars, custom motorbikes
00:30and stunning drivable recreations of the most outlandish movie vehicles.
00:3602. Mark-"Somebody comes to us and says I want a car with some rims and a ground effects
00:43and a paint job and we're like that's boring. We want to show people that you can do things
00:49that have never been done before and push the envelope a little bit and create things
00:53that are kind of iconic." 03. Mark-"Shannon's the designer. He comes
01:00up with these ideas. A lot of his inspiration I think comes more from comic books and movies
01:05and he'll come up with these just really outlandish ideas and then bring me a drawing and go hey
01:11let's build this and I'll look at it and go what were you thinking. He thinks if he can
01:16draw it on paper that I can build it out of metal. Unfortunately it's a little more difficult
01:20than that. Everything we build is drivable. So then I have to come up with a way of taking
01:24his idea and his inspiration and kind of turning it into something that's actually functional."
01:2904. Shannon-"It's really kind of a back and forth. We have to tweak it a little bit because
01:33you know a lot of times when I draw it, it's too far out there and he has to kind of rein
01:37me back in a little bit but it's that collaboration that makes the vehicles turn out so cool."
01:4205. Mark-"As 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. But the most stunning is the Assault Tumbler from The Dark Knight Rises.
02:0006. Shannon-"We had to build every inch of this from scratch. The frame, the chassis,
02:05the body, the interior, the suspension, the wheels, the glass. I mean pretty much all
02:12we could buy was a motor and it was pretty tricky. Now the whole chassis and body is
02:18a tubular chassis and it's all steel construction. Not roomy inside but it's pretty comfortable
02:24actually and it drives out really well. We had to add a lot of little cameras. There's
02:29a lot of tiny little micro cams all over it and there's seven or eight video screens on
02:34the inside because there are a lot of blind spots. Yeah the gas mileage on this thing
02:39is not the greatest. It does have a Corvette engine in it. Because of the shape of it,
02:45there's not enough room to put the motor in the front where it would normally go. So
02:50what we had to do was put the motor in backwards. So the motors here and the transmission is
02:55actually inside the vehicle and that runs into a gearbox that drops down and then the
03:00drive shaft comes back underneath the motor and back to the rear end. The turbine here
03:07which we originally had hooked up with a propane system to blow flames out but we realized
03:13that that was dangerous and stupid and a lot of people almost got hurt so we disconnected
03:19that. Normally we can't get over about 30 miles an hour with it because all the people
03:24around it. It's kind of hard to go fast when you're being crowded in but if you wanted
03:27it to it could definitely move because it's got a good engine in it. How 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. When I first saw the
03:41tumbler I thought it was just the coolest thing and I think it's awesome that it actually
03:44has a New York City Gotham tag on it. It's really really cool. If people can look at
03:50that and go oh that's nice but keep passing by, we probably didn't do our job right. If
03:54people have to stop what they're doing as they're driving down the road, yeah we've
04:00done 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? I really, I personally wouldn't sell it. To me it's that cool and
04:27it took that much time and effort to build it so I mean why would you get rid of it?
04:32What are you crazy?