Hawkeye is just about to wrap its first season, so MCU: Location Scout is back to uncover a difficult to find location!
LOCATION: Fat Man Auto Repair & Fat Man Used Cars (Brooklyn, New York)
SHOW: Hawkeye, S01E03 “Echoes,” S01E04 “Partners, Am I Right?,” & S01E05 “Ronin”
A flashback in Season 1, episode 3 of the Disney+ series Hawkeye has Maya Lopez witnessing the character of Ronin attacking her father at the ominously named Fat Man Auto Repair shop, presumably in Brooklyn. In the following two episodes there are scenes that occur at the Fat Man Used Cars lot, which appears to be a business connected to the Auto Repair shop. The trick was figuring out where this location was filmed.
While Hawkeye takes place in New York City and the surrounding boroughs, only a few of the key and iconic moments were shot in the city that never sleeps. The remainder of the series was shot in and around the Atlanta, GA area where a majority of Marvel Studios productions have taken place since 2015s Ant-Man. That meant to start looking for possible locations down south.
When initially looking for this location, there was only the imagery from episode 3, “Echoes,” to go by. Looking around on Google Maps at possible Auto Repair or Tire Store locations in the Atlanta area proved fruitless. No location seemed to have both the necessary building shape, nor “parking lot” space next to it (which would be revealed as the Used Cars lot in episode 4). It also seemed unlikely that a working business would allow Marvel Studios to take over their shop for the necessary shooting that needed to be done, so I would need to be looking at businesses that were no longer active.
With the release of episode 4, “Partners, Am I Right?,” an exterior daylight shot showed another aspect of the location. The two-tone tiles on the building seemed like a match, and it became apparent that this Used Car lot was more of the Auto Repair shop from the previous episode. This scene provided a couple more clues, such as the Green Highway sign in the background, and the fact that there was a billboard on the left side of the property (I was certain that the Used Cars sign was either set dressing or special effects). Sunlight provided some clues as to the orientation of the lot, so more searching was done. But still nothing turned up.
A blurry detail on a billboard provided the necessary clue to tracking this location down.
That’s when I decided to turn back to the smallest clue from the first screenshot I grabbed: a small, blurry billboard. There was no way to read what was on the billboard, but if I could find that billboard on Google Maps, I could compare a similar layout. It was a long shot, but amazingly, one that paid off. Looking around for parking lots that seemed to face the correct direction, near highways or freeways (and possibly train tracks as well), that had a billboard immediately next to the lot, plus a billboard nearby that faced the correct way was the right way to go. I happened to see a number of billboards near a highway (and railroad track) in Peoplestown, GA, near an auto repair shop.
Zooming in on Street View, and checking around the filming dates for the series (Dec 2020-Apr 2021) I was able to find a white billboard that looked very much like the blurry one from the episode. The Miller Ultra sign seemed to be the one. Orienting Google Maps satellite view with the screenshot placed filming near the College Park Customs repair shot, but none of the structures there seemed to match the show. However, I was certain that it was the place. Dropping into street view mode along Ridge Ave SW revealed everything. The images from December 2020 showed a new structure being built that matched the design of the repair shop. By March 2021 it was a completed building that was a perfect match for the set in the series, and by November 2021, the whole location had been razed and was back to being an empty lot.
This was just another case of targeted searching and dumb luck that yielded a location that may otherwise not have been found. Be sure to tune in to Disney+ on Wednesday, December 22, 2021 for the season finale of Hawkeye!
Please make sure to visit MCULocationScout.com for more filming locations from your favorite MCU Films and Television series.
Got tips? Got corrections? Let me know on Twitter @JovialJay or @MCUlocations!
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Behind every scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a location. Some are iconic. Some are functional. Some are completely fantastic. But all of them are there to support the story.
Here at the MCU: Location Scout, Jovial Jay digs deep to uncover the real-world filming locations behind your favorite super hero films. From Iron Man to Inhumans and everything in between!
Having grown up on comics, television and film, “Jovial” Jay feels destined to host podcasts and write blogs related to the union of these nerdy pursuits. Among his other pursuits he administrates and edits stories at the two largest Star Wars fan sites on the ‘net (Rebelscum.com, TheForce.net), and co-hosts the Jedi Journals podcast over at the ForceCast network.