The Batmobile

by B J Hoffman

Who could ever forget those immortal words: "To the Batmobile, Robin!" Certainly not the millions of fans who checked in at the same Bat time, sameBat channel every Wednesday and Thursday night for three years to see which masquerading villain or villainess was trying to destroy the Dynamic Duo. But the term Dynamic Duo is really a misnomer; in actuality the show had three stars: Adam West, Burt Ward, and the ever changing array of crime fighting technology they had at their disposal night after night. And from those gadgets, the most famous and recognizable had to be the Batmobile. Just as the Caped Crusaders were crime-fighters, so was the Batmobile. An up close peek at the interior spotlighted some of the Batmobile's bad guy busting abilities, like the Bat Eye TV Screen used to stalk Catwomen's lair or the Bat Ray Beam cracking the hideout of Egghead.

The first Batmobile grew from the minds of Kustom Kar King George Barris and William Dozier, producer of the Batman television series. The car went from pencil sketches to a fully functional Batmobile in three weeks. Four more Batcars followed within the next six months. The Batmobile's original body was courtesy of a '67 Lincoln Futura show car that never reached production. The Furtura's twin-bubble plastic dome, air scoops in the rear fender meant for the air conditioning and brake cooling systems, and pushbutton controls were forward looking enough to heighten the Batmobile's techno appeal. Exterior changes included reshaping the hood and elongating the fines and fluting them to form the batwings.

The car wasn't a stranger to the camera either. In 1956, it was featured in the Debbie Reynolds/Glenn Ford movie It Started With A Kiss. George Barris originally purchased the car intending it as a science fiction offering for another movie, but it was rejected and stayed in the Barris' garage until the decision was made to jump Batman from the comic books to television.

The 225-inch long Batmobile #1 weighed over three tons. Only this and the #5 car have full dashboards and all steel bodies.Cars #2,3 and 4, made from fiberglass, weighed half as much as the steel bats. All five cars have 428- cu.-in. 500-hp-V8 Ford engines and B&M modified automatic transmissions. Each car is currently insured for a cool one million bucks.

Cars #1 and 2 still belong to Barris. The #3 Batmobile, one of the two stunt cars, is owned by a collector in New York. Car #4, the drag racer, resides in a museum in Gatlinberg Tennessee. The #5 car, the only exact duplicate of Batmobile #1, was sold to a millionaire in New Jersey for $185,000. He has reconstructed the Batcave in his house for this piece of Bat Americana.

Of the five Batmobiles, the dragster was the busiest. It spent most of its time traveling cross-country for drag-racing exhibitions against another  Barris creation, the Black Beauty of Green Hornet fame. In these runs, the Batmobile in drag frequently clocked 162.5 mph in under 10 sec. (No wonder the Boy Wonder never drove.)

For its day, the Batmobile housed some pretty sophisticated crime fighting tools. At finger's reach of the Dynamic Duo were the Bat Ray Beam, Bat Ray protector, Bat Photoscope, closed circuit camera, Detect-A-Scope and fire extinguisher.

1990 marked Barris' 50th year in the custom car business. He's built everything from Elvis' gold dream cadillac to Bob Hope's ski-nose golf cart, but none of his creations is as recognized as the Batmobile. It's the most duplicated toy in car history. Movie remakes will always be part of cinematic life, but the chemistry of the original Batmobile can't be recaptured, no matter how much money is spent on the copy. The Batmobile has a special innocence that came with our youth.

The mystery that shrouded the Caped Crusader endures forever in the ominous black car.

B.J. Hoffman