Photo: RM Sotheby's
One of the stars of the Auburn Spring Auction organized by RM Sotheby’s on May 11 will be the 1966 Batmobile Recreation #5.
The car has been created to replicate the ones auto builder George Barris was commissioned to create for the 1960s TV series. According to the auctioneers, this particular car was used as a promotional car on tours around the United States.
Since new, the car has had only four owners, including for a brief period Barris himself. This version of the Batmobile was built by engineer Jim Sermersheim in 1966 not from fiberglass, as the extensive modifications to a car were done at the time, but from metal.
Under the undistinguishable body lies a 1958 Ford Thunderbird powered by a V8 engine, paired with an automatic transmission.
There are two stories of how the car ended up in possession of George Barris. The builder’s version is that he had federal marshalls confiscate the car at a car show in Indiana in 1966.
Sermersheim version is that he received a cease and desist order from Barris’ lawyer, but the order was also accompanied by an offer from Barris to buy the car. Since Sermersheim did not want to sell the car, Barris made him East Coast representative.
Regardless of the disagreements between the two men, or maybe because of them, RM Sotheby’s evaluated the car at anywhere in between $180,000 and $230,000. By comparison, George Barris sold his original #1 Batmobile at an auction in Arizona back in 2013 and got for it a whopping $4.2 million.
The one buying it will get a fully functioning vehicle, equipped with all the crime-fighting gizmos needed to a superhero with no superpowers: rockets that fire from the triple rocket tubes, a Detect-a-scope with a rotating arrow, and a working cable cutter blade in the nose.
Additional Batman adornments are also present, as seen in the gallery above.
Since new, the car has had only four owners, including for a brief period Barris himself. This version of the Batmobile was built by engineer Jim Sermersheim in 1966 not from fiberglass, as the extensive modifications to a car were done at the time, but from metal.
Under the undistinguishable body lies a 1958 Ford Thunderbird powered by a V8 engine, paired with an automatic transmission.
There are two stories of how the car ended up in possession of George Barris. The builder’s version is that he had federal marshalls confiscate the car at a car show in Indiana in 1966.
Sermersheim version is that he received a cease and desist order from Barris’ lawyer, but the order was also accompanied by an offer from Barris to buy the car. Since Sermersheim did not want to sell the car, Barris made him East Coast representative.
Regardless of the disagreements between the two men, or maybe because of them, RM Sotheby’s evaluated the car at anywhere in between $180,000 and $230,000. By comparison, George Barris sold his original #1 Batmobile at an auction in Arizona back in 2013 and got for it a whopping $4.2 million.
The one buying it will get a fully functioning vehicle, equipped with all the crime-fighting gizmos needed to a superhero with no superpowers: rockets that fire from the triple rocket tubes, a Detect-a-scope with a rotating arrow, and a working cable cutter blade in the nose.
Additional Batman adornments are also present, as seen in the gallery above.
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