Earliest Known Official Batmobile Now Up For Auction

The history of the Batmobile has been recently re-written when the re-discovered Batmobile had been restored earlier this year.

Built between 1960 and 1963 by Forrest Robinson, and toured as Batman's Batmobile by a DC Comic licensee in 1966, the car was abandoned in a field in 1967, where it lay forgotten for half a century, changing hands a number of times until it was purchased by Toy Car Exchange LLC in 2013 and lovingly restored by Borbon Fabrications.

The Batmobile began life as a 1956 Oldsmobile 88 with a 324 Rocket engine. In 1960, Forrest Robinson replaced the car's body with his original design, reminiscent of the 1940's and 1950's DC Comics Batmobiles.

With its bat nose and a large, single dorsal fin, the 1963 Batmobile is the first real car rendition of a DC Comics Batmobile. In 1966, a licensee of DC Comics, All Star Dairy, rented the car from Robinson and repainted and badged it with the officially sanctioned Batman labels and used the officially sanctioned Batmobile for the promotion of their Batman line of products. That same year, another licensee of DC Comics, ABC TV, used the Lincoln Futura customized by George Barris, in the then new Batman TV series.

Forgotten until recently, there was not one, but there were two DC Comics licensee-sanctioned real Batmobiles in the 1960s. At the time, no one realized the importance of the 1963 Batmobile and it fell into obscurity for half a century.

The 1963 Batmobile, newly discovered and restored to its former glory, is an important American pop-culture icon. This unique Batmobile (there are no replicas of the car) will be auctioned off on December 6 by Heritage Auctions.