In 1939 The Detective Comics #27 came out and the popculture world was never the same since that moment. Batman was a new kind of superhero. In fact he wasn’t super at all. But I think that this is exactly what made this character so popular all around the world – and besides that the cars of course. Chicks love the cars, right? Even Joker wonders, where does Batman get such beautiful toys!

The need to move fast around Gotham led Bruce Wayne first to use his own car. Which is not a good idea, when you consider that basically every gangster and villain in town want’s to kill you. So the Batmobile soon become black, bulletproof and equiped with a batcomputer and many usefull gadgets. There were literally hundreds of Batmobile designs over the years but most of them share some common features. If you see them, you instantly know, to whom this ride belongs:

• black base colour with yellow, red or blue accents – because he’s The Daaark Knight, right?
• some design features reminiscent of  bats – usually wings in the back or head with pointy ears in the front to ram some doors
• jet engine for faster moving around and occasionaly set some bad guys on fire or barbecue some lobsters
• sliding cockpit  – because when you have a bat siut on it’s quite hard to get into a tiny door without stepping on the cape
• heavy armour – that’s a must when you drive around like a maniac
• usually a two seater but sometimes only for one – he definitelly prefers to work alone
• gadgets, gadgets and more hidden gadgets!

Other than that the Batmobile comes in many shapes, sometimes it looks more like a race car, sometimes more like a tank. And everybody has his or hers favourite designs – The Animated Series one, the 1989 Tim Burton’s, The Tumbler, Val Kilmer’s Gieger-like contraption or the classic one from the 60’s. I like them all! And that’s why I decided to remake them all in LEGO form.

Designed to be driven

I really like to watch videos like the one below where the designers of these amazing movie cars talk about the process how they designed it.

Each and every batmobile perfectly reflects the part of Batmans personality portrayed in each movie, game or comics. For example most fans may not like Batman and Robin that much, but the car design in this movie is amazing and exactly what it needs to be! And the best thing? Most of the movie Batmobiles are real functioning cars! Yes, the real Tumbler drifts and jumps – of course they allways make a few different versions of the car but the main thing is, it’s really designed to be driven. The only feature that didn’t make it into the prototype was the real jet engine – becauce driving around with a flamethrower in the back is propably not a good thing even on movie sets.

There are even many replicas like Team Galag’s Arkham Knight Batmobile which is a real race car or many fan-made versions based on real world cars. Last year I was in LEGOLAND Germany and had an amazing opportunity to see the original 1989 Batmobile – and I have to say, it’s a beast! I got really inspired by it and I have already made several Batmobiles in LEGO form as you can see at the pictures below. And I won’t stop before I do them all! And then who knows? Maybe batwings? Batcycles? Batboats? Batsubs? Batrockets? So many thing to do and so little time!

Do you like Batmobiles? And which one is your favourite? Let me know in the comments and may be I will make instructions for it soon!