"Sorry. Did I say on the garage? I meant in the garage."
What better way to demonstrate a Badass Driver's skill than by Improbable Parking Skills, especially with Parallel Parking.
Sometimes Improbable Parking Skills are demonstrated by parking a vehicle efficiently in adverse conditions. In other cases, though, the driver chooses a difficult parking method to save time, or simply to show off.
One common method is to pull the handbrake while turning, using the drift to get the car exactly where you want it (as seen in The Blues Brothers). Expect screeching tires. Other nigh-impossible parking stunts include making the car climb or jump over other cars, fall from a height, roll over, etc.
Not to be confused with Rockstar Parking, which is about it being easy to find a space.
Examples:
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Advertising
- This
british commercial. The stunt man is a real life example.
- There's also this Audi commercial, which was a Take That! at Lexus' "self-parking" system.
Films — Animation
- In The Incredibles, there's an extended gag where Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl are in a camper van going several hundred miles per hour (it had just been detached from a rocket) and their attempts to navigate the freeway sound like they're casually commuting to work. After slamming on the brakes with Super-Strength the van rolls over several times before stopping perfectly in a parking space.
Mr. Incredible: Everyone alright back there?Violet: *dizzily* Super-duper, Dad!Dash: *laughing* Let's do that again!
- In Turning Red, this is downplayed. Ming pulls into the parking spot in front of the Daisy Mart perfectly in under a second.
Films — Live-Action
- Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls: Ace's crazy driving results in his sustaining tremendous damage, not to mention flipping upside down, but he still manages to plant it perfectly within a parking spot. Li~ike a glove! Subverted at the end of the movie, where he pulls the same trick again and still lands square in the space, but the vehicle is on its back and he has to be pulled from the wreckage.
- Lt. Shane Wolf and Zoe Plummer from The Pacifier
- One of Jackie Chan's earlier films has him doing a hand-brake turn/park of a mini, sliding it into a space approximately 1 mini 4 extra cm.
- Another Jackie Movie, Who Am I? (1998) has one of his new female companions pull this to evade pursuers, lining up perfectly with the rest of the row to look like it's always been there.
- Starship Troopers: It is implied that Carmen Ibanez has to have Improbable Parking Skills to land her shuttle in the middle of a besieged Mobile Infantry outpost during a fierce battle. Of course, she had already been established as the Ace Pilot. That is less a case of being skilled enough to land in the middle of the area (considering the shuttles are virtually VTOL craft to begin with) as it is she is the only one insane enough to actually do it in the middle of a millions-strong wave of incoming Arachnids.
- In the first National Lampoon's Vacation movie, Clark falls asleep at the wheel, the car wanders onto an exit ramp, careens toward a hotel, and Clark wakes up in time to scream and stomp the brakes. The car stops in a parking spot, and the luggage all tumbles off the top of the car to boot.
Clark: "Well, we're here!"
- In Luc Besson's Taxi and sequels, Daniel likes to parallel-park by drifting, usually making at least a half-turn in the process.
- Undercover Brother: in the last scene of the movie, the title character spins his car into a perfect parking position at a curb.
- Played with in Police Academy. In a full parking lot, our hero skis the car in between two other cars, leaving all three of them piled up and dented. Improbable skill, yes, but not a successful parking job.
Live-Action TV
- Due South: there is an episode where Ray puts his 1972 Buick Riviera into a controlled skid over a large field of ice to bring it sliding to a stop immediately next to Fraser and the guest star. Both of them gave him a mild What the Hell, Hero?, which he casually shrugged off.
- Inverted in the British road safety promo "The Saga of Reginald Molehusband", where the title character's parking skills are so awful they always draw a large crowd, until the day he finally gets it right. Unfortunately it only seems to exist now as an off-air audio recording.
- Mr. Bean thrives on this.
- In My Wife and Kids, Junior was trying to show his dad how he could drive responsibly and that he was maturing and parallel parked his car perfectly in less than a second.
- In the American version of Top Gear, rally driver and presenter Tanner Faust teaches a blind man to drift. His final challenge is to drift-parallel park, which is pulled off perfectly.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. sees Coulson and Skye trying to skydive in a damaged flying car. They just barely avoid a crash-landing and end up parallel parking at a nerd convention; the valet still makes them pay 20 bucks for the parking space.
Video Games
- The Pigmask who takes you directly to Thunder Tower in Mother 3 pilots the Pork Bean in a rather hap-hazard looking manner, before sliding perfectly in front of the entrance, thereby locking you in with no choice but to continue on to the end of the chapter.
Pigmask: That was some pretty sweet piloting, if I do say so myself.
- Highly averted in the Grand Theft Auto series. The driving controls are designed for you to be as reckless as possible, with little pinpoint accuracy ability except in the highest level/custom cars (and even then they're somewhat wobbly). Which is fine for most of the game, but there ARE missions requiring you not to damage a vehicle and after being accustomed to just ramming yourself into parking spaces haphazardly (if you bother to park in a space at all), it can become incredibly frustrating trying to park like a normal person would. Additionally, anyone trying to play unofficial "abide by the law" variant runs of the games, you will IMMEDIATELY notice how all parking and driving was NOT designed to follow normal automotive behavior.
- And of course to increase the difficulty factor, most of the "no damage" vehicle missions usually involve you driving a large, awkward vehicle with clunky controls. And then you're often given a TIMER on top of that.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Driving School, a series of precision driving tasks. One of these involves parallel parking by sliding into the spot from top speed. And if you want gold it has to be perfect and you can't dent the other cars. Hard to pull off, but awesome.
- The Grand Theft Auto V stunting community often pull of ludicrous parking maneuvers. While they do often damage their vehicles, it usually is very visually impressive.
Western Animation
- Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "Bubble Boys", Candace channels Elwood Blues to pull off a 90-degree Parallel Parking job with her right foot on the dashboard in her mother's temporarily-rocket-powered station wagon.
- In the Spongebob Squarepants "Mrs. Puff, You're Fired" episode Spongebob learns how to drift into a perfect parallel park between two cars blindfolded. Unfortunately SpongeBob can only do it blindfolded. Obviously he doesn't get his licence at the end of the episode and Mrs. Puff is back to/stuck with teaching SpongeBob how to drive.
Real Life
- These soldiers manage to drift-park a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
