The Batmobile !!

Go ahead, look in the credits for the series. You will find listings for names such as West, Ward, Craig, but you wont find one named Futura. Even though it was a car, The Batmobile was as much a part of the show as any live actor featured.

The Batmobile was actually a converted show car, The Lincoln Futura.

Lets go back in time , before the series started, before Adam West had put on his Batsuit, lets go back to the year 1955.

Lincoln originally Designed the car which was all hand built for the tune of 250,000. At the time it was quoted as being " The most novel of the years dream crop". It was one of the first cars to have idiot lights for fuel, battery, and temperature. The designers here made a full size plaster mold and sent it over to Italy where a metal body was made by Ghia. They finished it and shipped it back to the US completed. It was showed at car shows around the US from 1955 to 1959.

Here Is An Article From 1966 Popular Science -

"The Inside Story On Batman's Batmobile"

The Futura was retired from Lincoln and found new life as a movie star ! The car was repainted red ( to show better on camera ) and was in the Debbie Reynolds/ Glen Ford movie- It Started With A Kiss in 1959. After sitting on the studio lot for awhile, it found its way to George Barris, a Hollywood car builder where it would sit lonely and forgotten.... until 1965 when there was an new show being planned- Eddie Graves a 20th Century Fox production artist came up with the concepts needed for the car, turbine, jet ect and the plans were given to George Barris who decided that the Futura would fit the bill. Now many cars could have been built for these concepts however Barris was only given three weeks to deliver the car so with such a tight deadline, it made much more sense to convert a car rather than build one from scratch. If you look at the photos of the Futura, you will notice that it looks pretty much like the completed Batmobile with a few exceptions, the most noticeable was the removal of the center section of the bubble - replaced by a pillar and the fins were elongated also. The actual building of the car was not done by George Barris but his competitor Bill Cushenberry ( who sadly passed away December of 1998). According to Bill " I guess they were too snowed under, I did it at my own shop. Barris told me what to do, I didn't work from any sketches. I made up new fins that went all the way into the doors Then I reworked the wheel wells and made them all the same , and reworked the hood to make it look like a Batman car type hood. I had a welding machine and a little air hammer. I would pound the metal out and run it through a little air hammer until I got the shape I wanted. I would trim it and weld it on." After Bill finished, one of George Barris's employees put the finishing touches to the car and it went back to George Barris's shop to get the final touches. The Batmobile was born !

George Barris retained the rights to the car and leased it back to Greenway Productions on a week by week basis. It is interesting to note that when a car was needed for the new series, The Green Hornet, it was not George Barris that was picked to build it but Dean Jeffries another custom car builder and 20th Century Fox owned both copies of The Black Beauty and thus did not have to pay on a week to week basis .

Now for a bit more history on the car. The popularity of the car was unbelievable. It became a star- belching smoke, bat turns , telephone ect and fans wanted to see it. What to do? Well Ill tell ya what happened, George Barris set out and took molds off of the number one car and built three fiberglass copies. The first two were sent out on the auto show tour and the third was sent to dragstrips across the country to compete in staged events. While history has been stretched a bit in later years, the ONLY car to appear on the series and in the full length feature film was the # 1 Futura car. The others while made by George Barris and were very much like the original, never appeared on film.

The original car is still owned by George Barris to this day but the others have gone to collectors across the country. The most recent sale was the # 4 drag car. That auction I was able to attend here in my home town of Nashville. A man named Ralph Spencer purchased it and when I asked what the heck was he going to do with it, he told me- " pick up my kid from school in it" . WOW.

I have just touched on the surface of the history of the Lincoln Futura and it's sisters. If you want to see about anything you want to know about the car, go see Eric's creation,  The 1966 Batmobile Site

Here a few video clips of the car in RealVideo

The Bat TurnThe Bat Exit

George Barris Batmobile Interview

George Barris on Donnie and Marie interview about the Batmobile - Amazing he made 5 cars for the show ........

 

Batmobile Gadgets - Special equipment on the 1966 Batmobile

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