Famous Cars

The cult Batman TV series featuring Adam West as Batman was first shown in 1966 and did the most to launch the Iconic Batmobile. The car has previously only been seen in comic books in whatever guise the artist fancied.

Originally Dean Jeffries was given the job of designing the car from scratch, but the production was moved forwards, meaning the job was passed on to custom car builder George Barris, who was given just 3 weeks to build the car.

Barris turned to Ford, and used one of their abandoned concept cars – the Futura concept as the basis for the car. The long fins over the rear wheels and bubble roof were already part of the concept and needed only slim modifications extending them over the doors and giving the bat wing curves at the ends, and Barris converted the front end to resemble a Bat Mask.

The car was supposedly powered by an atomic turbine engine, but in real life was powered by a Ford V8. The cars weaponry included a chainsaw in the nose, lasers, a smoke emitter and nail spreader, as well as 2 parachutes..It also featured some options that have now become standard equipment on cars 50 yrs later such as a built in phone, radar, on board computer, and a rear camera.

Tim Burtons Batman was a huge hit in 1989 giving a dark Gothic look to the film and also to the car, producing a race-car style with an enclosed cabin with slide back roof for access, rear fins over the wheels, and a prominent jet turbine running the full length of the car and protruding through the nose.

The car was designed by Anton Furst. The car was built using two separate chassis from Chevrolet Impalas, and actually used a Chevy V8 to move it – the turbine was for appearance only. In the movie the car was armed with several different weapons in a true James Bond style, with spherical bombs the dropped from the centres of the wheel hubs, forward facing machine guns, side mounted shinbreakers, and had a grappling hook that could shout out sideways to attach to lamp posts to enable the car to make left or right turns at high speed without slowing down. The car also had several defences – armour plating could envelop the car like an armadillo, it had oil slick dispensers and smoke emitters to evade pursuers.

The car was also used in the second movie – Batman Returns, where it was destroyed fairly early on in the film.

The Batman Forever batmobile marked the directorial entry of Joel Scumacher into the franchise who wanted to take the film in a more comic direction for younger viewers and away from the dark Gothic style of the first 2 movies.

This Batmobile was the first of two by production designer Barbara Ling. The car was given a cartoon style with huge fins on the roof and rear wings, it also had light up panels beneath what appeared to be ribs.

The car had a couple of unique features, such as being able to rotate its wheels through 90 degrees so that it could move in a perpendicular direction, it also featured grappling hooks that were fired upwards to allow the car to drive up the sides of buildings.

The car did not last too long in the movie itself, with the Joker dropping a sack full of explosives in the cockpit.

The Fourth Batman film in the series that started with the 1989 Batman starred George Clooney in one of his less praised roles, with director Joel Schumacher going overboard in his mission to make the film look as “comic book” as possible. The film featured an outlandish plot and the batmobile was pushed in the same direction, to give it as much screen presence as possible, with a huge length bonnet, massive rear fins reminiscent of the original 60′s TV car, and open top single seat cabin and light up panels that glowed in red, orange, yellow and blue.

The car was about 30 feet long and designed by effects company TFX in conjunction with production designer Barbara Ling, and apparently tested to 140 mph.

“The Tumbler” was introduced in the 2005 movie Batman Begins and was a radical departure to the usual batmobile style, and in the movie was introduced as an experimental bridging vehicle developed by Wayne Enterprises, that could jump up to 30ft to lay the basis for temporary bridges. The car was originally seem in a desert army camouflage style and resprayed black for Batman’s use.

Rather than focusing on being the ultimate muscle car as previous generations of batmobiles had, the Tumbler focused more on body armour panels and appeared more like a small Tank, although it still retained a jet turbine engine.

The Tumbler car appeared in the 2008 Dark Night returns, and in that movie the car had the ability to separate off one side of the front wheels that became a motorcycle, this was known as the “Bat Pod”: