Long story. Bear with me.
Back in 2005 at a midnight showing of Ghostbusters, I started joking to my friend Will about how funny it would be to run out of a supposedly-haunted place like the Stanley Hotel or some large building in ghostbuster uniforms, carrying smoking ghost traps, handing the manager a bill for $5000, and disappearing before anyone could ask any questions. The goal would be to record the whole thing and put it on the internet. He laughed and said he knew how to build proton packs. I owned a white Subaru Outback at the time and I told him that if he built the packs, I'd build us an Ecto-1.
Flash forward nearly a year.
My friends Austin and Will and I are talking about doing something spectacular for Halloween. We lived in a small college town with a young and progressive population that was usually very supportive of creative stunts and the like. After much debate we decided to go with the Ghostbusters prank idea. In June of 2006 I start researching lightbar laws, construction costs, and ways to convert my car temporarily, with nothing permanent.
By September 22 I had completed the first iteration of my Ectomobile. It was a very simple and crude construction, but it had working lights and siren from the movie, as well as the ability to blast the theme song from the rack.
In retrospect it was very poorly-built and was on a shoddy car, but for a couple of college guys and a temporary prank, it did it's job very well.
Anyway, we roll out the newly-christened ECTO-1K (for Ecto-1...kinda) and people start going crazy. Within days, it's on the cover of the local newspaper, radio djs were trying to find out who we are, and the general public thought we were real ghostbusters. It was ridiculously popular and enjoyed wherever it went. A few days before Halloween the car is rear-ended by a semi truck, totalling it. BAM. We didn't know what to do until suddenly donations started flowing into our myspace page, and radio shows are encouraging people to call in and help keep the "Fort Collins Ghostbusters" on the roads. Shockingly, they raised enough money to pay for new vinyl and electronics. With the insurance money I bought a 2003 Outback, and we swapped the equipment to the new car. From there the popularity of car took off into the realm of the surreal. In 2007 I took a break from the Ghostbusters thing and branched back out by building a Jurassic Park Jeep,
which you can read about here.
Through the winter I got back to doing stuff with the Ecto.
Most notably, the car won the Fox News "Colorado's Favorite Car" contest. It spent a week at the Denver Auto Show, which was a pretty awesome experience. The loading line-up was hilarious; Lamborghini, Lamborghini, Porshe, Aston Martin, Aston Martin, ****ty 2003 Subaru, Lamborghini... well I thought it was funny.
This also provided me with an exhibitor pass which kept me from being thrown out for
things like this.
After that we scored an article in the national Subaru magazine, and then another
full-page spread in the official British Subaru magazine. My mind is still being blown at this point...
Then we got the real kicker. I received a letter from Sony Home Entertainment. I'd been using the Ghostbusters logo without permission, but I had not actually profited from the car in any way other than nerd XP, why the heck would the be messaging me? Turns out they wanted video of the Ecto for the Ghostbusters 25th Anniversary Special Edition Blu-ray! I obliged, but figured it was all too good to be true. A year later the release dropped onto store shelves and now you can see my car on the "Ecto-1 Restored" video in the special features! :confused Not bad for a station wagon with trash cans on the roof.
So, finally, the story of the Ecto Magnum, or as we call it; the Ecto-2K!
In January of 2009, my buddies and I are debating what to do with the Outback Ecto. The wood roof box has fallen into disrepair, and we now have so many people in our group that piling into the car is becoming uncomfortable. 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of the original movie, and it had occured to us that now might be the time to take the car across the states and hit some conventions. At any rate, the XBox game was coming out and there would be release parties and crap that we could go to. Ever since the Magnum rolled out, movie replica fans have been abuzz about the conversion of one into a "modern-day" Ecto. For a long time, the community regarded the Magnum to be THE choice for a modern conversion. I went with a Subaru because it's what I had and frankly, had I a black corvette or different car during that one Halloween season, I may just as well have ended up driving around a weird Batmobile conversion.
So, with a new job working for Apple, Inc. from home, I went out on a limb and found a 2008 SXT. The car was found in Arizona, and we had it shipped up in March. I took a few weeks to consider what I was undertaking, and construction officially began in May.
The general reasoning behind sticking with a modern car instead of making an all-out restoration of a 59 Cadillac was that the newer car would be easier to maintain and far more capable of making cross-country roadtrips under it's own power far more reliably. This reasoning would eventually bite me in the ass, and seeing other screen-accurate ambulances being completed does in fact make me
die a little inside each time, but it's still a lot of a fun, very comfy, and cheaper than a classic car.
And so it began.
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u134/Boomerjinks/Ectomobile/IMG_5579.jpg[/IMG
A good friend of mine who happened to be an art student drew this up for inspiration.
[IMG]http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u134/Boomerjinks/Ectomobile/magconcept.jpg
But I wanted to aim for something closer to this.
hings started with an ABS box, which would resist the elements far better than the previous wooden boxes.
Followed by a steel frame.
Followed by vinyl.
Then four marine speakers and all the little "equipment" greeblies on top.
And before you knew it, we were ready for launch on July 4, 2009!
To really test the car before taking it to New York, we opted to bring it along on our trip to San Diego Comic Con. The Magnum performed admirably, getting better highway MPG than the Outback, withstanding high speeds for long durations, and the plastic of the roof box held through Nevada quite well.
The Ecto survived 3,000 mile trip perfectly, and we even got The Horns for CHiPs!
The rest of the summer was marked by trips to local conventions and having the car on display at an outdoor screening of the movie at Red Rocks, where we greeted 14,000 people with lights and sound. We also got the opportunity to meet up with the other movie car builders in the area and take some great pictures.
Some pictures from September.
More later!
