Popular Science June 1966
The following article and photos was taken from Popular Science Monthly July 1966. The title on the front read,
"The Inside Story On Batman's Batmobile"
BATMAN'S BATMOBILE
Back in 1955, Popular Science published a picture (left) of the brand-new Futura, "most novel of the year's dream crop." Its pushbutton controls for Turbo-Drive automatic transmission; warning lights for fuel, battery, and temperature; and unique rear-fender scoops for air conditioning and brake cooling aroused much interest. The hand-made Lincoln Futura was built at a cost of $250,000
Here's the inside story on that
spectacular car driven by the Caped
Crusader. It does everything but fly
When
the Ford Motor Company unveiled its Lincoln Futura dream car in
1955, little did its imaginative 
stylists
suspect it would be the car in Batman's future.
The car that now enlivens the hottest TV show of the year originated as a $250,000 Lincoln experimental chassis with a special 500-hp. supercharged Continental engine. It has a 19-foot-long hand-formed steel body, a 129-inch wheelbase, and weighs 5,500 pounds.
The experimental car's twin-bubble plastic canopy, rear-fender air scoops for air condi-tioning and brake cooling, and pushbutton controls created a mighty stir when the vehicle was introduced at auto shows around the country. Later the Futura starred in the 1956 movie It Started tvith a Kiss, sharing top billing with Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds.
Its movie days were limited, however, and the Futura seemed destined for the same fate as many of the stars of the silent screen. Then it was bought by George Barns, a Los Angeles custom-car specialist who thought he could peddle it to a company interested in making a science-fiction movie. But it stayed forgotten until last fall, when another company hatched a more fantastic plans to put Batman on TV.
Producer William Dozier asked Barns if could convert the Futura into the Batmobile.
Barns took just three weeks to change the Lincoln stylists' dream car into the Bat-mobile that gives Gotham City's bad guys nightmares. "It's really the same car under-neath," he says. But the Futura's rear fins were made seven feet long and fluted at the ends to form bat wings.
The hood was reshaped to resemble a bat face, with a long scoop to the grille form-ing the nose. The grille cavity itself is the mouth and has rockets that give Batman added "teeth."
The mouth also has pro-jecting blades that "cut" through rough road blocks. The fenders are shaped into bat-ears, and the right and left "eyes" extend into the ''ears
'' The 'eyes'' simulate dual 450-watt laser beams, supposedly able to cut through rock and steel, but their amber lenses actually conceal operational head-lights.
Bulletproof, aircraft-type Plexiglas bubble windshields have replaced the Futura's original canopies. A center roll-bar arch splits the new cockpit. Atop the roll bar are several trouble and warning lights.
Just to the rear
of the roll bar are three awesome-looking "anti-theft rocket
tubes." (The Futura had a less spectacular circular antenna
there.) Right in back of them is a so-called "turbine exhaust
tube." Unfortunately, the Batmobile really has a 500-hp.
supercharged Lincoln V-8 engine.
Fighting the evil forces. After the exterior changes were made, the original frost-white blue gave way to 40 coats of nitrocellulose velvety bat-fuzz black, with an outline trim of fluorescent cerise. If all this isn't enough to frighten the forces of evil in Gotham City, the cockpit occupied by Batman and Robin is equipped with a terrifying array of crime-fighting gadgets. An antenna reactor-receiver relays message from the Batcave's computer and message center. Hooked into the dashboard are such devices as a revolving closed-circuit camera with a Bateye switch for anti-theft control. If a villain gets away with the Batmobile, the Caped Crusader can use a remote-control ejection seat to foil him.
"Despite all these frills," Barris say "the Batmobile is a working car. We get it up to 80 m.p.h. for some chases. And we have to service it every week espcially to get off the footprints that Boy Wonder -Robin puts on the fenders, getting in and out of the car."-Herbert Shuldiner.
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