Driven to collect

Mark Shields' girlfriend rolls her eyes at his beloved hobby.

When she found out that he really was buying the Uncle Rico van from "Napoleon Dynamite" -- another movie car to add to his already eccentric collection -- she told him not to expect her company on the long drive back to Minneapolis from Michigan, where he bought it.

"I told him he could make that trip alone," said Samantha Hatgidakis, 25, seemingly half-joking. "I was shocked he actually did it. I was hoping he was done."

"Done" implies there's been some doing. The latest addition is the actual 9-foot-high, carpeted and furnished orange van that Uncle Rico drove up to Napoleon's house during several scenes in the 2004 movie.

The van tops off a current collection of four movie cars on which Shields has spent a total of about $100,000 -- buying, repairing and enhancing them. The cars also cost $500 a month to store in the garage of the Uptown Minneapolis condo that he shares with Hatgidakis.

To some, the hobby might seem like a waste of money. Others find it intriguing. Hatgidakis described the "groupies" who went nuts over the cars, including one man who had a DeLorean time machine tattooed on his chest.

Shields, 41, studied pre-med at Houston Baptist University, worked for a newspaper and taught at a middle school before getting into Internet technology, his current industry.

Accidental obsession

It all started in 1999, when one of Shields' friends came across a raffle for a replica of the famous DeLorean time machine from "Back to the Future," which Shields says is his "favorite movie ever."

Shields didn't like the idea of sending raffle money to a "suspicious" online Florida stranger, so he waited out the raffle and then offered the man $15,000 for the car. The deal worked out, he flew to Florida to pick it up and drove it back.

"I thought 'OK, I'm done, I bought a weird car, it's awesome,'" Shields said while a small mob of wide-eyed bystanders gathered, taking pictures of the lineup of cars outside his condo.

But two years later, he came across an auto sales website that had a Batmobile replica on auction. Soon, that was his, too. After that, he took a long break, but couldn't resist when the 2007 movie "Transformers" showcased the easily replicable "Bumblebee" car driven by Shia LaBeouf.

Attention to detail

Bringing the car back, however, is just the beginning. Looking like a kid at Christmas, Shields tore the plastic from the two cheap-looking black seat covers decorated with red Chinese dragons. After an online search -- he's known as "the Googler" at work -- he had found a pair of the movie-original coverlets for $10.

"These are actually them," he said, putting the faux leather over the tall driver's seat. To prove it, he used his iPhone to pull up the only scene in the movie where Uncle Rico moves and the viewers can spot the design behind his back. Sure enough, they are the same.

"See?" he said, with an excited inhale. "I couldn't believe it myself."

That attention to detail shows in all his cars. The Uncle Rico van, which he bought in September, had changed hands four or five times since the movie came out. In that time, someone got rid of the original orange curtains and tinted the windows. Shields is restoring it all.

The effort reaps rewards. Corporate executives and companies with themed events rent the DeLorean for $750 a day. Shields has about five reservations lined up, including a prom trip, for the Uncle Rico van once it's fully repaired (he needs to replace the sunken-seated driver's chair and the "bed" area in the back) and restored. He doesn't yet know how much he'll charge to rent it out.

He has brought the cars to a few movie premieres, driven in the local Art Car Parade, the State Fair parade, and had the DeLorean appear in an episode of CTV 15's "Ghostbustin' 911."

Still, he said, it's a "hobby that my IT job pays for, not a hobby that pays for trips to Key West." And he says, with hesitation, that he thinks he's done "for a while."

Good news for Hatgidakis? She certainly wants to believe him, anyway.

"I hope he's done," she said.