Who do I contact? this man!
A New Jersey dad spent years and a small fortune to buy himself a Ghostbusters Ecto-1 car, perfect for touring the Big Apple’s iconic locations featured in the original movie. I made.
Nicky Ferrara, 38, a lifelong Ghostbusters fan, had dreamed of owning an Ecto-1 for years, but the 1959 Ecto-1 had been sitting in a California garage for nearly 50 years. The search for this car began when a Cadillac Landau hearse was discovered on eBay.
“Honestly, they didn’t even know what they had when they sold this car,” a licensed customs broker told The Post during a recent tour with Ecto-1. Told.
“My wife said, ‘If you want to buy a hearse and turn it into a Ghostbusters car, go for it,'” Ferrara said.
Ferrara immediately clicked the “Buy Now” button and shelled out $55,000 for the vintage hearse. He said the car still smelled of formaldehyde when it rolled into the driveway of his Essex County home in 2014. In all, he spent about $125,000 on the hearse. Featured vehicles.
He then embarked on the ultimate scavenger hunt, reaching out to scrapyards and garages from California to Toronto and across the Midwest, looking for hard-to-find parts.
“I’m calling junkyards in the Midwest and saying, ‘Do you have this part?’ Do you have that piece?”
His quest for a perfectly screen-accurate Ecto-1 led him to visit Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif., to get an up-close look at the original car used in the film, which was then on display on the lot. I even carried it.
“I watched the movie a billion times to build a car, but I wanted to know the exact dimensions of the roof rack,” Ferrara said.
Armed with a selfie stick and a tape measure, Ferrara took photos of the car’s roof so that every detail could be accurately reproduced.
Using a variety of props, including brackets and lights from a 1980s police car and a siren from a 1960s fire truck, Ferrara turned Frankenstein into a realistic, road-legal version of the Ecto-1 on screen. Succeeded.
His children Nicky, 5, and Domenica, 3, said: “It’s a normal part of life to have this car, and it’s like, ‘Oh, everyone has a Ghostbusters car.’ ”, he says.
Ferrara estimates that only a small number of comparable Ecto-1 replicas exist in the world, but “all other owners have kept it in their showrooms or museums and never, like me, actually take it out.” There is no such thing.”
The car has appeared at promotions, private events and city tours, and Ferrara said he also uses it as a “daily driver” to take it on errands, but it’s not the most reliable vehicle on the road. I admit that.
“Constantly checking fluids and making minor adjustments to brakes and brake lines is a labor of love,” says Ferrara.
“Every time I start it up, it takes my breath away a little bit.”
Thanks to Ferrara’s investment and attention to detail, the car was appraised for $300,000.
Since then, he’s put the car into action, taking fans of the series on spooky tours around Manhattan and spotlighting the film’s most famous filming locations.
Stops include the New York Public Library, Tavern on the Green, and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, famously stepped on by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the movie.
Of course, no Ghostbusters-themed tour would be complete without a stop at Tribeca’s FDNY Hook & Ladder Company 8, which was the headquarters of the Ghostbusters in the movie.
Ferrara keeps his car stocked with essential Ghostbusters gear, including proton packs and ghost traps, so fans can pose outside the fire station.
Private tours on Ecto-1 in Ferrara cost $850 for two people, $100 per additional guest, or $275 per person for public tours where riders are paired with another person.
Ferrara initially had a contentious relationship with Sony Pictures, the rights holder of Ghostbusters, but now has a truce with the conglomerate and is free from fear of copyright lawsuits. He says he can run a business.
He also promoted the latest installment in the series, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, in exchange for mechanics and promoters receiving red carpet tickets to movie premieres.
“We were hesitant to do a Ghost Tour, but since Sony relaunched the brand with a women’s reboot, we’ve become more inclusive of our fan base,” Ferrara said. .
“We approached Sony with the idea of touring, and they were like, ‘We’re fine, that’s fine.’ That doesn’t happen with short films or movies.”
Every time Ferrara takes the Ecto-1 out on the town, it turns heads.
The Post rode along with Ferrara for a preview run of the latest edition of his Ghost Tour, scheduled to begin later this year. To say the car turned heads is a bit of an understatement.
“I feel like a celebrity just driving around. It’s really amazing to see people’s reactions,” he said, clearly enjoying the moment.
“I love driving this car. It’s so much fun. When I look at people’s faces while driving the car, they lose their minds.”
True to his word, pedestrians of all kinds stopped and stared as cars passed by.
Midtown traffic cops stopped writing parking tickets by yelling “Ghostbusters!” When I saw the hearse, I started researching the movie’s theme song by Ray Parker Jr.
Ferrara said police seem to be particularly fond of the Ecto-1, regularly prodding him to turn on its lights and siren, even though it’s “technically illegal” to have it on civilian vehicles. It is said that it is on.
“They encourage it, which is really great.”
Construction workers wearing reflective vests and hard hats exclaimed enthusiastically, “We did it!” As Ferrara drove by, he got on the public address system and asked, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”
When New Yorkers caught sight of the car, they smiled in recognition and pulled out their camera phones to take photos and record videos.
Many people said that Ghostbusters had personal significance in their lives.
Outside 55 Central Park West, better known as “Spook Central,” where the film’s climactic final showdown took place, 62-year-old Gregory Pozamantyr watched a pirated VHS copy of the film in Leningrad as a young man. I remember watching the tape.
“I watched Ghostbusters on pirated VHS, but not the official one. Us kids had to find someone who had a VCR player, which was very expensive at the time. ” he said.
“Seeing this car brings back so many memories. I have to see the movie again.”
Simon Calderon, 34, of Highbridge, Bronx, was wearing a Ghostbusters suit with a homemade proton pack when Ferrara’s Ecto-1 suddenly stopped outside the Tribeca Fire Station.
“I love this car. Some people, like James Bond, want a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin, but give me an Ecto-1 any day,” he said.
As much as he loves Ghostbusters, Ferrara said he plans to collect and restore other famous movie cars for a similar tour next time.
The shortlist for upcoming projects includes the DeLorean from Back to the Future, the Ford Explorer Tour Car from Jurassic Park and the Volkswagen from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It includes a van, which he plans to convert into a “mobile pizza catering truck.” ”
Ferrara said he considers himself a steward of the car and takes that role seriously.
“I own a car, but it’s like a national car. It belongs to the fandom.”
Released in 1984 and starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson as the titular Ghostbusters, the film was a huge hit, grossing over $282 million in its theatrical debut. did.
A sequel, Ghostbusters II, was produced in 1989, but the series sat dormant for more than 25 years until a female-led reboot, also titled Ghostbusters, was released in 2016.
Previous releases in the 2020s include Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021 and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in March 2024.
