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25/02/2024 2:12 pm
Bought for $1 from Ford Motor Company, This tired old 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car showed up at the brother's shop.
Still bearing faded red paint from its use in the movie "It Started with a Kiss", Greenway Productions gave George Barris a $30,000 budget and 3 weeks to restore and convert the car to be a more modern Batmobile than the Bob Kane '37 Zephyr with the big bat mask attached to the front. That would have meant that"Batman" would have to be set in minimally in the early '50s for costume, sets and period automobiles which would have been cost prohibitive. Rushed immediately into production, the car was only capable of 45mph and had quite a few QC problems with all the original parts failing. So mods and upgrades were done on the fly and soon the car was powered by a Ford 429 in a new drive train so the cameras no longer had to speed up to give the illusion of speed. Barris smartly kept ownership of original plus the 4 other substitutes and leased it to Greenway and Warner Brothers, although licensing fees would need to be paid to those 3 entities PLUS DC Comics (the reason why it took a half century for a company to negotiate and pay the freight... enter Mattel). It's fascinating to be to compare the original Futura with the Barris modifications. It was a helluva conversion, using as much of the original as possible yet still producing a unique and very Batman-like result.
25/02/2024 2:33 pm
I remember when ABC was advertising the Batman TV series, they showed a glimpse of the Batmobile exiting the Batcave! I was freakin' IN LOVE! I was so thrilled that the TV series opted for a cool looking car rather than the Bob Kane designed car. In 1966, the Batmobile looked like a modern and well-done custom! The show, which, as we all know, was horribly camp, was a disappointment. But the highlight of the show for me was the Batmobile scenes! I think we learned from your review of the Lincoln Futura from the D4C days the Batmobile was actually 1:19 scale.
25/02/2024 2:45 pm
Batmobile with George Barris riding shotgun
25/02/2024 3:01 pm
Black Beauty, Munster Coach, and movie Batmobiles
25/02/2024 4:10 pm
Great nostalgia stuff. Loved the car and even enjoyed those campy Batman episodes. Thanks everyone for the fond memories.
25/02/2024 4:16 pm
- Yes, Mattel's Batmobile is slightly under-scaled. 😔 😔
- Nice post & pics Rich.
- I must be one of the few guys on earth that doesn't go "nuts" over the Batmobile; I'd much rather have an all stock Futura. 😎
- But I can certainly appreciate the car's cultural (world-wide ) significance and the herculean effort by Barris & his team.
- Given the choice.... I'd take the Munster's Coach over the Batmobile.
- Wow, look at that "kid" shaking hands with Barris! 😏
Steve Jacobs and Marty Johnson reacted
26/02/2024 9:27 am
It always bothered me that they used the beautiful Futura as the basis for the Batmobile but given the time frame involved it was the only way it could have been done.
Steve Jacobs and Christopher Moroni reacted
26/02/2024 11:40 am
It always bothered me that they used the beautiful Futura as the basis for the Batmobile
Always bothered me too, yet the wildly successful Batmobile significantly helped to keep the Futura in the public eye arguably decades longer than Lincoln probably ever could have. 🤔 🤨
Steve Jacobs reacted