View new posts | View your posts Let's Talk About Driving Around in Ectomobiles

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^ Love it, love everything about it.

Also I was "recognized" three times at the DragonCon Parade lineup as the guy that got pulled over by Atl PD in the girls video...thanks Kev.

Haaaa! A terrific little nugget of funny, perfect to start a new page with!

I'll out myself now. Bought an '06 Magnum about two months ago, and while I wanted a car with potential Ecto conversion in mind, it wasn't the primary concern. I just wanted a decent car that would replace my '02 PT Cruiser with 200K miles.

My Magnum is a daily driver, so any Ecto trappings will be temporary: that means magnets and eventually a lock-on roof rack. It's just too nice of a highway cruiser to saddle with the extra weight and drag.

What using magnets does afford me is the ability to trick out the car on a whim in just a couple of minutes. It's more of a Ghostbuster staff car than an Ectomobile, really, but it does get a reaction.

I've gone in two phases so far: phase one was a set of three no-ghost logos, two 14" ones for the doors and an 8" one for the hatch. Phase two consists of 3/4" strips with yellow and black caution tape on the hatch and along the rocker panels.

In both cases I received horn honks and thumbs-up from other drivers within five minutes of getting on the highway. That, I learned is how powerful the concept of the Ectomobile is with the general public, and how lasting an image it is. Here I am with a white Dodge Magnum with a few magnets on it, no roof rack, no greeblies, not even a GB uniform worn by the driver, and yet folks are going crazy for it.

Gimme more.

you know, emphasis?

On Monday as I was driving to a Wendy's I passed a group of groundskeeping guys on the sidewalk. Naturally, the dudes with the backpack leafblowers were there. I went through the drive-through and came back around, by the time I passed them again, two of the leafblower dudes had come together and were holding the front nozzles together and they were shaking their bodies for a "cross the streams" effect.

I nearly wrecked.

That's beautiful.

The other day I drove the Ecto to the baseball field where I run the press box (one of many part-time jobs I currently do). I made sure I could see the car from the box to keep an eye on it. Several people stopped and posed for pictures with it, which is cool with me. However, when I went down to the home dugout to get a lineup, the 50ish-year-old captain made me want to punch him in the face.

"That your wagon?"
"Yes sir."
"You a bail bondsman or what?"

f****g Jailbusters.

I got that same comment two days after ours came out of the Decal Shop. They shouted "JAILBUSTERS"....

found this on youtube a little while back. Funny yet disturbing.

Well? DID you turn on 247?

I have a pretty good memory of driving around with Boomerjinks. He was wearing his Ghostbusters uniform like he always does, and he was driving REALLY slow down the highway. Like 35 in a 60.. making everyone go around him.. impeding traffic. As the cars drove by he was waving and blowing kisses, posing for potential photo-ops... and I believe at the time he was calling the local news papers for them to carry the story of the slow moving Ghostbusters car.

I hear Boomerjinks does this ALL THE TIME.

I did!

I never take the costume off. I slow traffic. And I come to a complete stop for people taking pictures with their phones. At night. In the rain.

Instead of a seatbelt, Boomerjinks just has a flight suit you zipper on. Its DOT approved.

So disappointed in him.

Yesterday afternoon we were stuck in traffic on I-95 approaching the George Washington Bridge. A painters workvan pull up infront of us honking and waving, and then after a moment we see it, one of their paint crew has covered himself with a white blanket in the back of the truck and is doing a ghostly dance. Hilarious,,, for the first 3-4 minutes, then it just kinda got creepy.

While stopped in traffic outside a resturant with outdoor dining.

Black Lady Eating: "What! What da f*** is dat on da roof dat car? Is dat a bomb?"

Police officer walking by: "Relax lady it's just the Ghostbusters."

"Who dat is?"

"Them"

"oh"

Also I don't think I posted this yet but a while back at a gas station a guy in a cable truck came over and complimented the car, then he pointed at the dish, "Who's your service with?"

"No one."

"No really is it Dish Network or...."

"It's just a dish, its for Ghost detection."

"But how is the reception on it?"

"goodbye"

Having worked as a tech support operator at Dish Network, I can relate to people's stupid questions about satellite dishes. There's just a certain point where you need to say "It's mostly alright, but the nudey channels still come in fuzzy."

I made sure to sand off all brand stampings from my satellite dishes starting in 2008.

Yeah mine has none either

I just spent the last hour reading through all of these posts. When I initially saw some of the pictures from Ecto conversions I was all "oh yeah, new project." But after reading the posts, I'm afraid my temper would get the best of me. I would end ripping off the ladder and bludgeoning some smart ass with it.

Maybe I'm safer in my unmarked family grocery getter.

I don't trust society enough to put a ladder on our Ecto. Not even one designed for aggressive negotiations.

As for the dish, I'm pretty sure it is illegal (or at least a contractual restriction) for any vendor in the state of NJ to sell a sattelite dish unless the customer has a current sattelite service plan. We had to use ebay to get ours from out of state as multiple stores refused to sell me one.
So, I painted over the logo from day 1.

If I had it in me to mount a to the frame of my car, I'd do it. The thought of crumpled quarter panels freaks me out, though.

Saw this on the back of a Honda Element recently and it got me thinking... though.

We have a ladder on our Ecto. It holds my weight fine, no issues at all, and no member of the public has tried to climb it.
One of our franchise members Kristi told me of a morning she left her apartment to jump in the Ecto for a drive. There were two old ladies staring at it, deep in conversation about "why anyone would want to drive the space movie car." Space Movie Car is now our affectionate nickname for the Ecto.

Now I'm curious. How is your ladder attached to the car?

Kevin. You don't need a ladder on your car. Just think of how many people try to jump into your Jeep...

I'd rather have nerf bars so the girls could ride on the car SWAT style.

Also, people only jump into the Jeep WHEN YOU LET SEABURN ENCOURAGE THEM.

So finally get to post here..

So I took my ecto out for its first "Real" drive, to get my door logos put on. One of our other members Mike (Ecto Response Vehicle) was going to put them on for me, so we started off on the trek with a stop at burger king for some food before we hit the highway. I thought I had checked the gauge and we had enough gas to get food and then hit the gas station. Well, the car in front of me in the drive through was a single mom without about 6 young kids.. and she took FOREVER to order. We finally get our food, and head out of the drive to the red light, at what is probably the 2nd most busiest intersection in town. Suddenly as I am about to turn, she cuts off. I freaked out.. turns out, we were out of gas. So I help up traffic for about 15 minutes. Had people blowing, yelling crap out the window. All the while my sister in law was nearby, so we called her to grab some gas from a gas station in a can and bring it back. By this time, noone had stopped to ask what was wrong, they just blowed or went around me. Finally an employee from the Sonic, across the street walked over and asked us if we needed help. We explained and she went about her merry way. A few minutes later, the cops showed up.. and the cop had me back the car into the burger king parking lot.. with him pushing it. 2 cops had shown up, and one of them happened to be my cousin of all people, and she shot the breeze with me and then called his wife to come up and check out my car (no logos at this point.)

So, he escorted me to the gas station, and I filled her up.

We got back on the road, and on the trip there... we went through several football game crowds.. and I got "Its the Mf'in Ghostbusters" a few times.

We finally get there, and visit Spirit Halloween and then Mike put on all my logos (doing a great job I might add.). On the ride home on the interstate, a car full of college kids was trying to "stay up with me". My wife looked over and said they all had cellphone cameras up trying to take pictures. I flashed the lights a few times for em, and a guy wearing like 80s sunglasses and a pop collar, cheered in approval and they blowing the horn and swerving on the road.

Once we got back in town and I pulled in to get some gas I heard a guy at the next pump say "OMG thats so awesome"...

as we were leaving, a car almost ran into me trying to snap cell phone pictures. Their expressions were priceless.

All in all, interesting and fun evening.

Sounds like an exciting day, save for the running out of gas part. I have been waiting for that to happen to me. The gas hand on my car, while functional, does tend to float and can't always be trusted. That's actually my second-greatest fear when it comes to my car. My greatest fear is getting a ticket for impersonating an emergency vehicle. EVERY cop that I have bumped into while in the car, whether they are county, city, or state, tends to say the same thing, " Cool car. Do the lights work? As long as you don't use them on the road, you're ok." I'm still paranoid as hell about it. I even got some bar bags just in case. I mean, the law actually states that I can't even have them on the car (because they are blue).


EDIT: Sorry, I know I've said most of that before in either this thread or another about blue lights, but a black-and-white followed me for six blocks tonight and scared the $hit out of me. I just knew he was gonna pull me over. Thankfully, he didn't.

Loved that one! We had a similar one when we were out in the ecto-1C:

Passenger in red S10 pickup leans over driver to yell: "Hey! Where's Robin Williams?!"
Driver shakes his head and pushes him back in the passenger seat in shame.

We've also gotten:

"Do you have their jet packs, too?"

"Is that thing actually nuclear powered?"

"Is that the actual car they used in the movie?" - Keep in mind, we're driving around in a 1991 Chevy Caprice. A car that was built 7 years after the movie. *sigh*