The Eleanor Mustang from Gone In Sixty Seconds is one of the world’s most iconic movie cars and replicas pop up from time to time.
Given the popularity of the car, it’s probably not surprising that replicas face a number of legal issues. We’ve mentioned them before as, in 2018, we told you the Fusion Motor Company had secured the rights to build “officially licensed Eleanor Mustang Fastbacks.”
Of course, the legal issues aren’t widely known and YouTuber B is for Build discovered them the hard way. In a video uploaded yesterday, he talked about his project which involved putting a 1967 Mustang fastback body on the chassis of 2015 Mustang GT.
While the build went great and incorporated some modern features into the ‘old’ pony car, things quickly went wrong as they wanted the model to look like the Eleanor Mustang. As the YouTuber explained, he found out the Eleanor Mustang is copyrighted and trademarked, and this means you can’t replicate its look without proper authorization.
As a result, the videos of the build have been deleted and he says the car is “now property of Gone In Sixty Seconds.” While the YouTuber doesn’t elaborate, it appears lawyers got involved and stopped the project. In particular, the title of the clip is “My Lawyer Made Me Change The Name Of This Episode So I Wouldn’t Get Sued.”
The lack of details makes it hard to know how things went down but, five years ago, Deadline reported on the case of a maker of Batmobile replicas. It pitted builder Mark Towle against DC Comics.
The case reached the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote “The panel held that DC Comics owned a copyright interest in the Batmobile character, as expressed in the 1966 television series and the 1989 motion picture, because it did not transfer its underlying rights to the character when it licensed rights to produce derivative works.” As a result, Towle’s replicas infringed on DC Comics’ copyrights.
Thanks to Stephen for the tip!