A lot of activity has been going on with George Barris and the rest of Hollywood when it comes to movie cars. It seems Barris has bitten off more than he can chew when it comes to taking credit for some of the more popular movie cars, including the Ecto-1. While Barris did make a few replicas of the Ectomobiles on Superior Landau Hearse bodies, he never touched the original Ecto cars. Universal Studios, producer of the Back to the Future series, has recently filed suit against Barris for claim to be the creator of the BTTF Delorean.
Similarly Ghostheads alike are hoping that Columbia Pictures will file suit against Barris for the creditability of his claims that he was the car designer of the Ecto-1 (and 1a) as according to
IMDb. The Barris Ecto Replicas have been appearing on auction sites for the past few years and are always claimed to be the movie used cars. The Ghostbusters Prop Archive would like it to be known that Barris had nothing to do with any of the real Ectomobiles. The Ecto-1 was originally thought up between
Dan Aykroyd and artist
John Daveikis, before being finalized by
Steven Dane.
Watch this video of Barris talking about his Ecto replica as if it were the real deal here:
http://www.barrisbilt.com/gatlinburg.html