gone ecto

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Mike Stevens

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My new Cadillac LaSalle Club magazine came today. The magazine is The Self Starter. Cadillac was the first to get Charles Kettering's new self starter in I think 1912. Volume 52 number 4 April 2009 is the new issue. On page 14 is a picture from the Volo, Illinois Auto Museum. The picture is suppose to be in honor of the anniversary of the 59 Cadillac. The car they chose to represent the 59 Cadillac is an Ecto car. There is even a manequin of one of the Ghostbusters. Go figure. I guess even a procar not to the liking of all of us is better than no procar mention at all.
Mike
 
Sadly, I know the story behind that fake Ecto at the Volo Museum. That was a fully and correctly restored 1959 Eureka combo that had been owned by a PCS member in Illinois. He sold it when he came across his dream pro car, which he still happily owns, and the 59 started changing hands. When I first saw it at Volo, it was still a correct stock pro car...with a $50,000 price tag on it. Since it didn't sell, they had the brilliant idea to turn it into a Ghostbusters car, and now it has a $150,000 price tag on it. Makes sense, huh?

When I first saw it as a fake Ecto, which was at the Chicago Auto Show, I immediately was thinking "oh no, I hope they didn't do what I think they did". I asked a person who was manning the display about it, and was told that they wouldn't have done such a thing, they are a museum that beleives in preserving cars. Later, when I saw the car again without ropes around it, and was able to get up real close and really look it over, sure enough, they did do what I thought they did.

This one incident has made me lose all respect for the Volo Museum. They loudly advertise having the largest collection of movie and television vehicles, but now I find myself wondering how many of them are also fakes. Additionally, the museum has some sort of relationship with George Barris, who pays an annual visit to the place, and Barris has scrawled his signature across the hood of every movie and television car in the place, including ones that he had nothing to do with!

An hour or so west of Volo, in Rockford, Illinois, is another car museum that also claims to have a Ghostbusters car "that was actually used in the movie". It is a 59 Superior.
 
Patrick, i've noticed the same thing too about george Barris in recent years. His name is plastered all over movie cars he had nothing to do with like ones built by Dean Jeffries & others. Reading about the "movie car" guys you kinda lose respect for them. I read an article about a man who in the late 1970's hand-crafted a Batmobile from scratch and put it in a "Cavalcade of Stars & Cars" indoor show... it was siezed by Barris Customs for "copyright infringement". However, here is by far the worst restoration story ever... the story of "Black Beauty #1" that was found badly neglected. It was bought & contracted to be restored by Dean Jeffries... this story is LONG but well worth the read!
http://www.katoman.com/green%20hornet%20folder/black_beauty1.htm

We will all think twice of EVER having a movie car restored after this one...
 
Not exactly.....

The movie car was a 1959 Miller-Meteor, this car was made by butchering the 1959 Eureka once owned by Dan Brintlinger and later owned by Jeff Barb in West Virgina. It is not an accurate reproduction of the movie car at all.
 
Patrick, i've noticed the same thing too about george Barris in recent years. His name is plastered all over movie cars he had nothing to do with like ones built by Dean Jeffries & others. Reading about the "movie car" guys you kinda lose respect for them. I read an article about a man who in the late 1970's hand-crafted a Batmobile from scratch and put it in a "Cavalcade of Stars & Cars" indoor show... it was siezed by Barris Customs for "copyright infringement". However, here is by far the worst restoration story ever... the story of "Black Beauty #1" that was found badly neglected. It was bought & contracted to be restored by Dean Jeffries... this story is LONG but well worth the read!
http://www.katoman.com/green hornet folder/black_beauty1.htm

We will all think twice of EVER having a movie car restored after this one...

After reading that lengthy diatribe on the restoration and the ultimate battle to protect the rights to what he had originally purchased, it makes me wonder why anyone would want to ever own a studio car.
 
I fought with the manager of the Volo Museum for about a half hour about the car being fake. My girlfriend thought I was going to jail. They play a movie snip on a tv screen by the car and I told him to look at it, I even showed him a model they had on the shelf for sale and the growing crowd even agreed that this car didn't even have the correct shape. I tried to get my money back, I argued that I drove 6 hours to see this car, and to find out its a fake was BS. He never even gave me my admission price back. He told me he would look into it (yeah right).
I have also wondered how many other cars were real, I think they are ALL fakes. The Scooby Doo Mystery Machine is not even close to the movie one either (or the cartoon)
 
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