It’s goofy looking, almost ugly, really. The proportions aren’t quite right, it flows in a few different directions, yet it still fits into the franchise like it’s been there forever. Iconic, even though it hardly ever existed. Photo courtesy of several places on the internet, not a source tagged anywhere that I could find.
I’ve known this for a long time, but I never knew the whole story. The first appearance of Batman was in Detective Comics issue #27 in 1939. In that issue, Batman was dressed in grey and black, with his yellow belt and great big ears, almost like Wolverine from X-Men. Other than that, he looked like Batman. This same issue was also the first appearance of the Batmobile, which makes sense, as Batman didn’t have any real superpowers like flight or speed. The Batmobile was drawn as nothing more than an ordinary-looking red car from the late thirties. Almost like a 1939 Ford with a stretched hood, but different enough that they wouldn’t have had to pay any likeness rights. That’s just a drawing, though, so the Barris Batmobile from 1966 that Adam West drove is still the original live-action Batmobile, right? Wrong. In 1943, Columbia released a fifteen-chapter theatrical serial featuring another Batmobile, a bone-stock 1939 Cadillac Series 75 Convertible. That means the 1966 Batmobile was the first custom, made-for-Batman Batmobile, right? Wrong again. There was one more, in 1963, created for the sole purpose of selling ice cream.
Three years before Barris took the Lincoln Futura and customized it into the iconic Batmobile for the Adam West era of Batman on television, DC Comics had already got their feet wet in the custom car world. Forrest Robinson, a talented but overall ordinary guy, had taken a 1956 Oldsmobile and chopped it up into a pretty radical custom. There was hardly a flat surface or straight line on the finished product, thanks to a whole pile of fibreglass, and the radical custom touches even included sliding pocket doors like the Kaiser Darrin. Under the hood was a 394 Olds, and out back was a giant shark fin. Pictures pre-restoration are rare and are all in black-and-white, but I believe the car was painted white when it was purchased by DC Comics, rather than the silver that it was painted when Robinson originally built it. It wasn’t bought for television or movies, but rather for personal appearances, as an advertising aid for All-Star Dairies who had Batman-themed ice cream. Like all promotional vehicles, when you’re hot, you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re sold and abandoned out of sight and left to die in a field. In 2008, it was discovered, purchased, and “restored” to its former glory. Here’s where it gets confusing: The colour scheme changed drastically during the restoration, from a light, possibly white colour, to the iconic black and red of the Barris car. How does it look? Weird, exactly the way a comic book car should look. The fact that it’s so obscure yet was restored to better-than-original condition to tie it further into the franchise shows that Batman didn’t need superpowers. He’s got an enormous fan base as simply a rich, dark gadget guy.
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