1966 Batmobile (Barris Hero Car #1)

A dream car from Ford

The Batmobile began as the Lincoln Futura, a one-off concept car designed by Ford stylists Bill Schmidt and John Najjar with the Lincoln styling team. Ghia built it by hand in Turin, Italy, in 1954, at a reported cost of $250,000. It had a double clear-plastic bubble canopy, hooded headlight pods and huge outward-canted tailfins. Unlike many show cars, it was fully drivable, with a 368-cubic-inch Lincoln engine on a prototype backbone frame that later went into the Continental Mark II.

Its original color was a pearlescent white. To get the shimmer Schmidt wanted, Ghia ground up the scales of thousands of fish and mixed them into the paint. The press saw the car at Chicago's Congress Hotel on January 5, 1955, and it debuted publicly at the Chicago Auto Show on January 8. Television viewers saw it on the Today show that March.

In 1959 the Futura, repainted red because the pearl finish did not photograph well, co-starred in the film It Started with a Kiss with Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds. Ford then sold it to George Barris for $1 and 'other valuable consideration.' Because it had never been titled and could not be insured, it sat behind his shop for several years.

The King of Kustomizers

George Barris was born George Salapatas in Chicago on November 20, 1925, the son of a Greek immigrant. He and his older brother Sam were raised by relatives in Roseville, California, where they rebuilt a worn-out 1925 Buick as their first custom car and founded a car club that used the spelling 'Kustoms,' which became his trademark.

At 18 he moved to Los Angeles and opened a body shop in Bell. In 1951 the brothers built the Hirohata Merc, one of the most influential custom cars of the era. The business became Barris Kustom Industries, and its cars ended up in films and on television: the Munster Koach and DRAG-U-LA for The Munsters, a truck for The Beverly Hillbillies and, later, updated cars for Knight Rider.

In late 1965, 20th Century Fox Television and producer William Dozier's Greenway Productions first hired another customizer, Dean Jeffries, to build a Batmobile from a 1959 Cadillac. When the studio moved the premiere up to January 1966, Jeffries could not finish in time, and the job went to Barris. Rather than start from scratch, Barris turned to the Futura behind his shop.

Weeks, not months

Herb Grasse handled the design, and Bill Cushenbery reshaped the metal. Accounts of the schedule and budget differ: several sources say three weeks, while the 2013 sale description says Dozier gave Barris 15 days and $15,000. A Los Angeles news report says $15,000 paid by 20th Century Fox, and another account puts the cost at $30,000. The car first appeared in primer with white stripes in a network presentation reel in October 1965, and was then painted gloss black with fluorescent cerise striping.

Barris kept ownership and leased the car to the studio. Its gadgets included a nose-mounted cable-cutter blade, Bat Ray projector, Batscope, Detect-a-scope, a police-band cut-in switch, a Batphone and Bat Smoke. Two rear-mounted ten-foot drag parachutes allowed the quick 180-degree 'bat-turn.' The 2013 sale listing describes the drivetrain as a 390-cubic-inch V8 with an automatic transmission.

The car changed during the run. Its Futura steering wheel was replaced with one from a 1958 Edsel, and extra gadgets such as a trunk net and a Bat Ram were added. The main license plate, 2F-3567, was sometimes swapped for others.

Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel

Batman premiered on ABC on January 12, 1966. Dozier, who had never read comic books, decided after studying them that the show had to be a pop-art, campy comedy. Because ABC moved the premiere from fall to January and had only half-hour slots open, each story aired in two parts on consecutive nights, joined by a cliffhanger.

The series ran 120 episodes over three seasons, ending March 14, 1968, with a feature film released between the first and second seasons. It was popular enough that the comics adopted its tone and its Batmobile. When the show ended, the comics dropped that car for a plainer design.

Forty-seven years with Barris, then a record

After filming ended, Barris kept the Futura Batmobile on display at Barris Kustom Industries in North Hollywood. To meet demand he built three fiberglass copies on Ford Galaxie running gear, two for the show circuit and one for exhibition drag racing. At one point all four cars were coated in black velvet 'fuzz' paint, apparently to hide stress cracks, and later restored to gloss black.

In November 2012 Barris announced the car's first sale. On January 19, 2013, at auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, the bidding opened while the crowd sang the show's theme song. The hammer fell at $4.2 million; with a 10% buyer's premium, the total was $4.62 million. The sale was widely called a world record for a car built for film or television, just ahead of the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 sold in 2010. The buyer, Phoenix-area logistics businessman Rick Champagne, 56, told reporters he had a toy Batmobile as a boy and joked that he would tear down a wall to keep the car in his living room.

In June 2015 Champagne offered the car again at an asking price of $5 million. It later went privately, for an undisclosed price, to David Anderson of Virginia, who also owns the #2 Barris car. He was reported as the owner as of August 2016. Barris died in Encino, Los Angeles, on November 5, 2015.

Telling the original from the copies

The original is the metal-bodied Futura on its own prototype frame. It began with a Lincoln engine, but problems with the aging car led the production to swap in a Ford Galaxie engine and transmission by mid-season. The three Barris copies have fiberglass bodies on 1965-1966 Ford Galaxie chassis. One of them, the drag car, ran a dual-quad Ford 427 V8 and turned quarter-miles in the mid-12-second range. Another car, known as the #5, was built by Jim Sermersheim on a 1958 Thunderbird chassis and owned by Barris until 1989. In June 2017 it was offered for sale at an asking price of $250,000.

Officially licensed replicas have been built since 2010, and some have sold at auction for six figures. None of that touches the Futura: it is the only one that was a Ford concept car first, the only one Barris bought for a dollar, and the car he sold in 2013 as the original Batmobile.

The numbers

Series

Batman, ABC, January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968

Episodes

120 over three seasons

Schedule

Twice a week in seasons 1 and 2; weekly in season 3

Film

Batman (1966), released between seasons 1 and 2

Car length

About 19 feet

Timeline

1. 1954

   Ghia hand-builds the Lincoln Futura concept car in Turin at a reported cost of $250,000.

2. Jan 8, 1955

   The Futura makes its public debut at the Chicago Auto Show.

3. 1959

   Painted red, the Futura appears in the film It Started with a Kiss.

4. 1965

   After Dean Jeffries is paid off, George Barris gets the Batmobile job and converts the Futura.

5. Oct 1965

   The car, still in primer, is filmed for a network presentation reel.

6. Jan 12, 1966

   Batman premieres on ABC.

7. Mar 14, 1968

   The series ends after 120 episodes.

8. Nov 2012

   Barris announces that he will sell the car at auction.

9. Jan 19, 2013

   The car sells for $4.62 million at auction in Scottsdale to Rick Champagne.

10. Jun 2015

    Champagne offers the car for sale at an asking price of $5 million.

11. Nov 5, 2015

    George Barris dies at 89.

12. Aug 2016

    David Anderson of Virginia is reported as the owner of both the #1 and #2 cars.

The world in 1966

• Jan 13, 1966

  Robert C. Weaver becomes the first Black Cabinet member, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

• Apr 19, 1966

  Bobbi Gibb becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.

• Jun 2, 1966

  Surveyor 1 makes the first U.S. soft landing on the Moon.

• Jun 13, 1966

  The Supreme Court decides Miranda v. Arizona.

• Jun 30, 1966

  The National Organization for Women is founded.

• Sep 8, 1966

  Star Trek premieres on NBC.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1966 Batmobile (Barris Hero Car #1) is number 19 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (17 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Ford sold the $250,000 Futura concept to George Barris for $1 and 'other valuable consideration.'
• Ghia mixed ground fish scales into the Futura's original pearlescent white paint.
• Before Batman, the Futura starred alongside Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford in the 1959 film It Started with a Kiss.
• Another customizer, Dean Jeffries, started a Batmobile on a 1959 Cadillac first but could not finish in time.
• To answer viewer complaints about parachutes littering the street, the show added a parachute pickup crew with its own labeled van.
• The crowd sang the Batman theme as bidding climbed at the 2013 sale.
• The 2013 buyer joked that he would tear down a wall to park the car in his living room.