It attracts attention with its replicas of famous Hollywood cars.

When Damian Muzzi lines up his car collection in front of his house in preparation for his trip to the next car show, it usually creates a bit of a traffic jam in his quiet neighborhood.

This is because he has perhaps the most unique car collection in the state.

And if you’re a fan of classic movies and TV shows from the 80s and 90s, you’d probably be exacerbating the bottleneck yourself if you were there.

That’s because all five of his restored replicas are instantly recognizable to pop culture buffs: the Bluesmobile from The Blues Brothers, KITT from Knight Rider, the A-Team van, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, and the Myrtmobile from Wayne’s World. .

Seeing just one of the cars can be nice, but when all five come together at a car show, many are transported back to their childhood.

And if you happen to see a caravan of all five of them rolling down the road, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a hallucination.

“The first car that passes may not catch someone’s eye, but as soon as they see the second one, they look back and ask, ‘What’s going on?’ says Damian’s father, August, who owns Wilmington’s. Lunch Angelo and usually helps drive cars with his wife Terri.

Attention to detail

Muzzi, 45, always had project cars in his garage and worked on everything from a 1968 Pontiac GTO to a humpbacked 1935 Ford Tudor.

But it was about 10 years ago when he bought a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am and began transforming it into KITT, one of the most popular cars in his collection.

Now with five Hollywood cars in service, his hobby has turned into a business called Delaware Star Cars (facebook.com/DEStarCars). Now, in addition to appearing everywhere from Wilmington Blue Rocks games to car shows, including the Hagley Museum and Library, it allows rentals so you can have one or more cars at your private event.

He carefully tried to make his versions of famous cars as close to screen accuracy as possible – within his budget, of course.

Muzzi hasn’t kept track of how much money he’s poured into his hobby-turned-business, perhaps intentionally. “I don’t want to cry at the end of the day,” he jokes.

He watches TV shows and movies over and over again to catch every detail, down to the correct three antennas on the roof of the A-Team van or the color of his fog lights.

Sometimes he can buy parts for these projects. Sometimes he has to build them from scratch. Whatever the method, he does his best to get the job done right.

“He is very talented. I don’t know where he got it from,” says Muzzi’s father August, who usually drives the A-Team van while his wife, Terri, drives the KITT. “Sometimes he really shocks me. I look at what he does with these cars sometimes and all I can say is, “Are you kidding me?” “

The machines are so precise that memories can be triggered by an unsuspecting passerby.

“Older guys become young when they walk by and realize what they’re looking at,” says Muzzi, whose co-pilot in the DeLorean is always Stella, his German shepherd. “Their past comes to life. I’m a child of the ’80s, so I understand it.”

His home garage can only fit two cars, and that’s where he keeps his most expensive ones: a DeLorean and a KITT. The other three are kept in a private parking lot behind his house.

He wants to find a new place to live with his Delaware Star Cars and has a unique desire.

“I want a small house with a very large garage,” says Muzzi, whose day job is running a computer repair business. DJM computer repair.

He’ll need a huge garage if he ever buys his dream addition to his collection: a Freightliner FL86 cab to create his own Transformers Optimus Prime.

The idea is not only for it to be the centerpiece, but if he adds a car trailer, he can load up his entire collection and won’t have to rely on friends and family to help him individually drive cars at every event.

KITT from Knight Rider

KITT may have been his first star car, but it’s still a work in progress even a decade later.

It’s extremely detailed, especially the colorful, futuristic dashboard. And spare parts are quite expensive.

But when he bought it for about $8,000, it was black, so he was ready to start detailing it, including the iconic red light on the front.

Over the years, he has used various tricks to get KITT to speak in the same voice as the car in the series, originally voiced by actor William Daniels.

Initially, he used MP3s via Bluetooth via a smartphone. And now he has an artificial intelligence app on his phone that allows him to tell KITT what he wants to say, and the machine repeats it almost instantly.

Muzzi’s friend Mark Burton, who also often helps him move cars, says he and Damian enjoy the new technology, usually getting a laugh while making someone’s day.

“We just sit in our lounge chairs and make the machine say, ‘Hey, you’re wearing a striped shirt. Yes, it’s me, talking to you,” Burton says. “It’s fun.”

Muzzi even has a replica of the classic blue and gold California license plate from the series, “KNIGHT”, and he also has a legal Delaware “KNIGHT” license plate on the back, making it street legal.

Van “Team A”

His next project was the A-Team van, which began its transformation journey as a basic white cargo van—more specifically, a 1983 GMC Vandura, just like the one featured on the NBC adventure show that premiered in 1983.

In addition to the detailed antennas and fog lights, he custom-made a handle attached to the front of the van and painted it to replicate the original.

“These are all little things that a normal person wouldn’t even notice, but a computer geek who’s into it will say, ‘Oh my God. You know what? This is really what is needed,” says Muzzi.

DeLorean from Back to the Future

Next up was the 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, the only car in the collection that doesn’t appear on screen. And this is on purpose.

Since this is a rare DeLorean with a low serial number, he decided not to make the major changes needed to make it match the look from Back to the Future.

After attending a DeLorean car meet and hearing requests from DeLorean fans not to change the limited edition car, he agreed. However, he can sell this copy for another one in order to turn it into a real DeLorean time machine.

Even though the silver DeLorean is the only car that doesn’t look like the movie (sorry, no flux capacitor), it took two years to build.

“It sat in a barn for about 20 years before I got it,” says Muzzi, who believes there are only three DeLoreans registered in Delaware. “When I bought it it was supposed to be drivable, but when I showed up the engine was dismantled.”

A nice touch: hidden in the passenger seat is a classic JVC video camera, just like the one Marty McFly carries in the film.

Bluesmobile “Blues Brothers”

He most recently completed his Bluesmobile, originally purchased as a yellow 1974 Dodge Monaco sedan.

The police car’s new paint job intentionally gives it a slightly worn look, in keeping with the film.

And the car’s dashboard looks exactly the same as in the film, thanks to its repeated viewings. It’s littered with a pack of Chesterfield Kings, an old crushed can of Budweiser, sunglasses and cigarette butts. He placed magnets under each item to keep them in place.

Burton usually drives a Bluesmobile with a comically huge, unmissable speaker tied to the roof by a rope, while wearing a black fedora and black sunglasses, like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in 1980’s Saturday Night Live. gave birth to the film.

When he stops at a traffic light, chances are someone will shout out a quote from the movie.

“I hear: “We are on a mission from God!” a lot,” he says. “And then I give my whole speech: “We have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark outside, and we wear sunglasses.” It’s quite fun. People love it.”

The signature was signed by Belushi’s brother Jim earlier this year at a private summer party in Centerville after he took the stage in a car before performing with a band billed as The Blues Brothers.

It was a pretty neat scene, but it could have been neater. Aykroyd was also scheduled to be there, but had to cancel due to illness.

Myrtlemobile from Wayne’s World

The newest addition to Delaware Star Cars is a blue 1976 AMC Pacer with painted flames shooting out of the front tires.

The Pacer, not to be confused with the AMC Gremlin of the same era, is what Wayne and Garth drive during the 1992 film Wayne’s World starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey.

The Myrtmobile, as it’s called in the film, is also the setting for the film’s most iconic scene: the sing-along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Inside, Muzzi outfitted his Mirthmobile replica with everything seen in the film: a cup dispenser with a classic Pepsi cup, a cup crusher, a portable CD player on the dashboard, and even a licorice dispenser on the car’s ceiling.

However, instead of sweets, it is filled with red yarn because the heat will melt it.

Have a story idea? Contact Delaware Online/The News Journal’s Ryan Cormier at: [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).