(music)
In the early 1960s DC Comics sold the rights for Batman to be made into a TV series to 20th Century
Fox. As development of the series progressed, it was clear that Batman would need to drive a car,
in car-obsessed 1960s America, and it would need to be extravagant! With a good-sized budget for a
prime-time TV show, the production team approached Hollywood car customiser Dean Jeffries to come up
with something, and he started on plans to alter a 1959 Cadillac. But with deadlines looming,
the production team asked for the car to be finished in just a couple of weeks.
It was clear that was impossible, so the team searched for another option.
Enter George Barris, a life-long car customiser who’d started loaning out his futuristic
automotive creations to film companies in the 1950s. By the 1960s he’d started making custom
cars for TV, such as the Beverly Hillbillies 1921 Oldsmobile, The Munster Koach from “The Munsters”,
and a 1929 Porter for “My Mother The Car” – a bizarre sitcom where our hero buys a car which he then
finds is a reincarnation of his deceased mother. As you can imagine that series didn’t last long!
The Batman production team approached George Barris to produce them a Batmobile in the same
2-3 week deadline. Fortunately, George had already bought a car that would be a great starting point.
Ford had commissioned a concept car from the Italian Ghia design studio for the 1955 Chicago
Auto Show. Ghia took a Lincoln chassis and 330HP V8 and built a whole new body around it, taking
inspiration from the designer’s close encounter with a shark. The Lincoln Futura featured many
new technology features, such as a Plexiglas pod covering both occupants, a fuel gauge that used
colours to warn the user when the tank was low, push-button gear shifting and scoops to air cool
the rear brakes. The car didn’t have windows that opened, instead relying on air conditioning. In
true “Batmobile” style, it had a microphone in the aerial to pick up outside sounds.
The car was painted a pearlescent white, made by adding thousands of tiny fish scales to the paint.
The car was a big hit, and Ford released a model kit and a toy. Design features
from the Futura would appear in more subdued forms on Lincoln’s over the next few years.
Ford loaned the Futura out for the 1959 Debbie Reynolds film “It Started with a
Kiss”. The car was repainted red, as the white pearlescent finish didn’t photograph well.
It was still in Ford’s hands in 1961 when Ford used it for a promotional film “The Secret Door”,
highlighting Ford’s design studio. But automotive fashions changed quickly in the 1960s,
and Ford had no need for a show car they’d used multiple times.
As the Futura couldn’t be registered on the road, it was sold for the nominal price of $1 to George
Barris for display purposes only. That’s a far cry from the roughly $250,000 price or about
£1.8M ($2.5M USD, €2.1M, $3.2M AUD) today it had cost Ford to make the car in the mid-50s.
So, when the Batman TV show team came asking for a Batmobile, George knew that with a few tweaks the
Futura could be the perfect fit. With a production artist from the TV show and 5 of George’s crew,
the team got to work to get the car ready. The whole look of the car was altered to make it less
shark-like and more more bat-like. A paint can was reworked to turn it into the exhaust for the
car’s supposed “turbine engine” with “jet drive”. With the recent film "Goldfinger" fresh in people’s
minds, the car got similar tricks to James Bond’s Aston Martin. The Batmobile could spew out smoke
to confound Batman’s foes, and also included a cutter blade, projector, anti-theft device,
“detect-a-scope” and many other features. And what 1960s car wouldn’t be complete without
a Batphone, and a Mobile Crime Computer linked to the main Batcomputer back in the Batcave?
To complete this cutting-edge look, it even got a steering wheel from a 1958 Edsel!
In the end it took longer than 2-3 weeks to get the car ready. 6 weeks later the
pilot TV episode was being filmed – without a completed Batmobile. It would take another
week until the team got the paint finish right and Adam West and Burt Ward could fight crime,
hopefully without your cape trapped in the door! George Barris applied for a patent on the
design – a smart move as the TV show was proving popular, and soon model Batmobiles
would be sold to kids around the world. Three more Batmobiles were built in late 1966,
to be used to promote the TV show. As there was only ever one Lincoln Futura made,
these were built on a lengthened Ford Galaxie chassis. One version had working headlights,
and another – that was used for promotional events at drag strips, had a performance V8
engine, shot flames from the exhaust and could do the quarter mile in 12 seconds!
An American fan built his own Batmobile using a 1958 Ford Thunderbird that was eventually bought
by George Barris. Another Batmobile replica was built for promoting the Batman series in the UK
using a 1958 Chevy Impala. Since 2010 DC Comics have allowed officially licenced replicas,
and several have been produced. The Batman TV show and movie lasted
from 1966 to 1968. George Barris had leased all four Batmobiles to 20th Century Fox, so they
remained his property. He would occasionally show them at Batman fan events, but as they started to
show their age, cracks in the fibreglass formed and he decided to cover all four in black fuzzy
paint that was more resistant to kid’s sticky fingers and dirt than regular paint. Starting in
the late 70s, Batman and Batmobile nostalgia meant it made cameo appearances on several TV shows.
The three Batmobile copies eventually made their way into private collector’s hands, but the
original Batmobile stayed with George Barris until 2013 when he decided to put it up for auction with
a £1.8M reserve price. The car ended up going for £3.1M ($4.2M USD, €3.6M, $5.5M AUD), the
highest price anyone had ever paid for a car designed for a movie or a TV show.