This is the video I've been waiting for. I'm obsessed with the two original 1989 Batmobiles. This is amazing, I wish I could have been there. Thanks for taking all this footage.
hahahahah!!! If anything, it's a result of my chosen career that I am so thorough :D Still, that's the highest of compliments, and I'll take it! Thank you sir! That legit brought a smile to my face!
Hey Matt!!! It's been a while, old contact here from the RPF. This was a fantastic review and the details that you frame and present are captured extremely well. Tribal knowledge being what it was, I thought I had read some time ago that the dimensions of the original 89 car were wider than the others, so much so that when Returns was made, the rear hips were actually brought in. You probably know something about that, but it's one thing that I've always thought was an obviously visual cue when replicas were made that was inaccurate.
Hey dude! Long time no seeeeee! lol. Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm so glad that people are enjoying the video and my ramblings. The rear fenders were narrowed for the six flags cars, but all of the cars used in production of 89, Returns and now The Flash are all the original Fat Bottom Girls. Almost all replicas out there also have the narrow rear ends too. I do not have documentation or evidence of the following, but the word on the street is the rear fenders were narrowed for the six flags replicas so that they could more easily be loaded onto standard sized car hauler trailers, both enclosed and open. I cannot say with certainty if that is true, but it certainly makes sense and fits the available evidence.
@@TheProjectWorkBench You're welcome! This is one of those videos that I can rewatch over and over because it is very objective and well framed. To me, this car is a unicorn, the fact that it's the A-Car is jaw dropping. I'm envious that you had such a great opportunity to really document it. I think, could be wrong, that Jeff Dunham owns(ed?) one of the Returns cars. I also remember seeing some pictures of Jay Ohrberg with the 89 car in 89. I love this sort of historical review. Awesome!
A good friend of mine made the exact same suggestion BUT the problem is, so much of the reference photos that were given to me were under the condition that I not share or post. I think I will do a video like that eventually, but it'll take some doing as I won't be able to use all the stuff I have acquired. It's a great idea though.
Fantastic video. This breakdown is what I have been needing. Has the A car or B car ever been on display at WB at any point or has it always been the promotion car?
Yes definitely all three cars have been on display at the WB tour over the course of the last five years. I saw the A car a couple times, the B car went in when production began for The Flash (This is speculation but the timing lines up) and the Promo car is there right now.
Thank you for sharing this! It's hard to find true footage of any of the originals. One detail about the "Beauty" or "Hero" car from 89 that always stood out to me was the passenger's headrest, which is unique because it has a leather seam down the lower center of it. (You can see it in the scene where Batman brings Vicky Vale to the bat cave but nowhere else in the movie.) I know they had different cars for different purposes but I've never been able to identify the headrest with the seam down the center on any Batmobile since. And it doesn't appear to be on this Batmobile. Do you have any thoughts on this?
VERY interesting observation. I will have to look into that. I feel fairly confident that over the years they redid the fabric on the seats, and I'm almost entirely certain they redid them for the Flash, so if it was indeed there at some point on the car in this video, it would be gone today :(
@@TheProjectWorkBench That's kind of what I figured. It also appears that with at least one of the 89 cars, it may have been engineered so the seats could be easily removed. I'm not sure why, but if you look at the shot of Batman getting out of the Batmobile with Vicky Vale, when they run from Joker's men through the streets of Gotham, it appears that only his headrest is being propped up by two long rods and the back of his seat is missing entirely. "Let's go."
@ I’ve been following since you started the build . And you really went at it hard and made great progress and then stopped. I know you had some setbacks etc but it would be great to see some updates
Having seen the studio process buck go at auction and the PDF & video they published on that, I would be interested to see a comparison between the interiors side-by-side between that and the A/B cars. Then there's that electric powered gloss black car that sold for something like 1.5mil this past year or so? They left the V8 engines in the A&B 1989 cars But they needed the electric powered car to drive on the closed Indoor set of Returns. I don't have personal knowledge but a little digging on CLTC and such, says that car was built by the same dudes (Carl Casper and Tom Oberhaus of Hollywood Productions per wikipedia) who also built the full scale Batmissile and BatSkiBoat. They allege three cars were built (so in addition to A/B 1989 cars); I don't know firsthand otherwise. You can see two distinctly different headrest styles in different cockpit Hero shots during Batman Returns, the lowered/short set most likely allowing the rear-middle hidden driver see out of the battery-powered car clearly. Same can be said for Batman 1989! Couldn't say which shots were A/B/Process car, but a detail often overlooked either way. I'd wonder if Michael Uslan has any details about them, he's very much involved in social media. Julian Caldow is also engaging, and funny enough he saw a pic of my 1989 style car mid-construction a few months ago and thought it was a pic from the real 1988 build! Pretty amazing video you shot here, thanks dude!
Almost all of the information published originally with that 1.5 million dollar car for sale has since been retracted or corrected elsewhere. It was a six flags car that had been restored. And yes you're absolutely right about the head rests, and the differences on the moving cars and the process cockpit. I have not done a deep dive on the process car cockpit differences, but that might make for a fun video. Propstore published some really great high res pictures of the interior of theirs, which were great. I am not at all convinced of the "electric car on set for returns because in-sound stage requirements" line of thinking. I think that was a post-hoc explanation for the 1.5 million dollar car or something like it. If someone can show me evidence of an EV batmobile on the set of returns, I'm totally happy to change my mind, but none of that makes any sense. Like, they shot a fireball into a storefront and blew the thing up, and that was on a soundstage. How can that be OK but a gas burning car is not? lol. They blew up the Shrek's department store and that was on a soundstage. None of that makes sense. lol That said, thank you for your post and contributions! Obviously, I love this topic and am always eager to be introduced to new facts :D
One thing that's interesting to me about this video is that starting at 2:06 it looks like you can see through the hinge of the little door that opens up to shoot the frisbee things. Behind the front wheel on the passenger side. Maybe it's just a misleading angle but it almost looks like this car doesn't have an engine.
Yeah I saw that. I think what's happening is this car does not have a lot of the structural stuff that you would find in a normal car. No wheel buckets on the front, oddly shaped firewall, etc. I cannot say for certain if there is currently an engine in there, but there are other explanations for why you can see into the engine cavity.
@@TheProjectWorkBench True, the structural layout of this car is unique. That said, the only times in recent years that I've seen a screen used 1989 Batmobile driving under it's own power it was the other car. The one with the Onstar Antenna on top. That was in 2003 for Looney Tunes Back in Action and then when they had all the Batmobiles out at Bob's Big Boy in 2012. Have you ever seen this KITH Batmobile driving? Not that it proves anything one way or the other, I just find it interesting.
I noticed that as well & it is strange & I also find it odd that the builders of the original 89 never mentioned or spoke of in a interview where the original they built is or what happened to it over the years or that there even was a second car built other than the MTV contest car thats out there somewhere. The history of the 89 & its copies is so vague & so many different stories of where they ended up.
I don't like that the gas fillers were added behind the small circular windows on the passenger sides. I think both a and b have them as well as dunhams car.
Yeah my treasure trove of photos shows the filler cap on both the A and B as they exist today. I do not consider Dunhams car in this video as I find many of the claims about it dubious, and I also have not had much firsthand experience with it.
whats the story with all the all the painted chrome and alloy parts like the wheels and fuel caps and front turbine now painted this new body colour? just a lazy restoration? the original dark titanium tinted clear looked better
From what I have pieced together (and I'm willing to be corrected on this) the car's original paint job was in the 89 movie, it was updated for Returns, painted Grey for the OnStar commercials, then repainted to this dark grey for the Flash movie. The explanation is that it was a creative decision by whomever was using the car at that time. I would say it wasn't lazy restoration, just creative decisions.
There seems no consistency behind the claims about his car, which makes it hard to pin its history down. Do you have a link to any video or photo that can support that claim? I'd love to see it! I always wondered what happened to the spinner car.
@TheProjectWorkBench it's in a video he did man must have been 10 plus years ago. Really wasn't a video he did it was an interview he was doing with somebody. I know he said there was a list of rules he had to follow giving him so that he can use the car.
I've seen jeff's car and heard him speak about it. It is not the B car. I'm not convinced it's a production made car, but it could be. He also says it's voice activated, which it clearly is not as he is using a remote in his pocket, so it makes me skeptical of all of the claims he makes about the car. His car is still a great looking car and of course it's awesome and I wish it was mine :D
@ I think if it wasn’t production used it wouldn’t have been featured in the WB piece as they’d know I’m sure much more quickly than us fans to a degree if it was or not. If it wasn’t for that then I’d deff be skeptical as well sir.
@@stichhavoc88 It has screen _lineage_ with being an Ohrberg body (the guy who produced the stunt copies for Returns and then the narrowed trailer-fitting Six Flags cars) but as far as being made for or featured in any movie, that's a no. All that matters from WB's perspective is that he's a celebrity, who adds clout to the documentary, and WB's exceptionally poor archive of '89 materials (there's a reason they used ancient and inaccurate recast batarangs from eBay in The Flash) means they make a lot of mistakes and maintain plausible deniability. Just look at their consumer division's insistence that the '89 car was black, or that the speargun was a grapnel gun!
@@pennygadget7328 Where did it come from then? This is all really interesting & I would really like to know how many were actually produced by WB & who built them for the movies & Six Flags & their whereabouts. Only proof ive ever seen is the original 89 & the copies made by Jay Ohrberg. You can tell in pictures which ones were made by WB & Jay & which ones are replicas but no way of knowing if its just the same car just in a different place.
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This is the video I've been waiting for. I'm obsessed with the two original 1989 Batmobiles.
This is amazing, I wish I could have been there. Thanks for taking all this footage.
That's awesome, man. Thank you for watching! And thank you for the kind words.
God damn, you're thorough. How did you not wind up with a career in failure analysis? Nicely done.
hahahahah!!! If anything, it's a result of my chosen career that I am so thorough :D Still, that's the highest of compliments, and I'll take it! Thank you sir! That legit brought a smile to my face!
Hey Matt!!! It's been a while, old contact here from the RPF. This was a fantastic review and the details that you frame and present are captured extremely well.
Tribal knowledge being what it was, I thought I had read some time ago that the dimensions of the original 89 car were wider than the others, so much so that when Returns was made, the rear hips were actually brought in. You probably know something about that, but it's one thing that I've always thought was an obviously visual cue when replicas were made that was inaccurate.
Hey dude! Long time no seeeeee! lol. Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm so glad that people are enjoying the video and my ramblings.
The rear fenders were narrowed for the six flags cars, but all of the cars used in production of 89, Returns and now The Flash are all the original Fat Bottom Girls. Almost all replicas out there also have the narrow rear ends too.
I do not have documentation or evidence of the following, but the word on the street is the rear fenders were narrowed for the six flags replicas so that they could more easily be loaded onto standard sized car hauler trailers, both enclosed and open. I cannot say with certainty if that is true, but it certainly makes sense and fits the available evidence.
@@TheProjectWorkBench You're welcome! This is one of those videos that I can rewatch over and over because it is very objective and well framed. To me, this car is a unicorn, the fact that it's the A-Car is jaw dropping. I'm envious that you had such a great opportunity to really document it. I think, could be wrong, that Jeff Dunham owns(ed?) one of the Returns cars. I also remember seeing some pictures of Jay Ohrberg with the 89 car in 89. I love this sort of historical review. Awesome!
Ive been saying this is the hero car for years & you should do a video with the pics of the cars, that would be pretty cool to see
A good friend of mine made the exact same suggestion BUT the problem is, so much of the reference photos that were given to me were under the condition that I not share or post. I think I will do a video like that eventually, but it'll take some doing as I won't be able to use all the stuff I have acquired. It's a great idea though.
Fantastic video. This breakdown is what I have been needing. Has the A car or B car ever been on display at WB at any point or has it always been the promotion car?
Yes definitely all three cars have been on display at the WB tour over the course of the last five years. I saw the A car a couple times, the B car went in when production began for The Flash (This is speculation but the timing lines up) and the Promo car is there right now.
@TheProjectWorkBench Do you know what car was on display at WB back on the 75th anniversary? I think it was 2015.
Yes!❤
INDEEED!!!! lol
Thank you for sharing this! It's hard to find true footage of any of the originals. One detail about the "Beauty" or "Hero" car from 89 that always stood out to me was the passenger's headrest, which is unique because it has a leather seam down the lower center of it. (You can see it in the scene where Batman brings Vicky Vale to the bat cave but nowhere else in the movie.) I know they had different cars for different purposes but I've never been able to identify the headrest with the seam down the center on any Batmobile since. And it doesn't appear to be on this Batmobile. Do you have any thoughts on this?
VERY interesting observation. I will have to look into that. I feel fairly confident that over the years they redid the fabric on the seats, and I'm almost entirely certain they redid them for the Flash, so if it was indeed there at some point on the car in this video, it would be gone today :(
@@TheProjectWorkBench That's kind of what I figured. It also appears that with at least one of the 89 cars, it may have been engineered so the seats could be easily removed. I'm not sure why, but if you look at the shot of Batman getting out of the Batmobile with Vicky Vale, when they run from Joker's men through the streets of Gotham, it appears that only his headrest is being propped up by two long rods and the back of his seat is missing entirely. "Let's go."
when are you going to get your bat car finished?
"Hopefully Soon!" - Me. February 2008.
@ I’ve been following since you started the build . And you really went at it hard and made great progress and then stopped. I know you had some setbacks etc but it would be great to see some updates
Having seen the studio process buck go at auction and the PDF & video they published on that, I would be interested to see a comparison between the interiors side-by-side between that and the A/B cars. Then there's that electric powered gloss black car that sold for something like 1.5mil this past year or so? They left the V8 engines in the A&B 1989 cars But they needed the electric powered car to drive on the closed Indoor set of Returns. I don't have personal knowledge but a little digging on CLTC and such, says that car was built by the same dudes (Carl Casper and Tom Oberhaus of Hollywood Productions per wikipedia) who also built the full scale Batmissile and BatSkiBoat. They allege three cars were built (so in addition to A/B 1989 cars); I don't know firsthand otherwise. You can see two distinctly different headrest styles in different cockpit Hero shots during Batman Returns, the lowered/short set most likely allowing the rear-middle hidden driver see out of the battery-powered car clearly. Same can be said for Batman 1989! Couldn't say which shots were A/B/Process car, but a detail often overlooked either way. I'd wonder if Michael Uslan has any details about them, he's very much involved in social media. Julian Caldow is also engaging, and funny enough he saw a pic of my 1989 style car mid-construction a few months ago and thought it was a pic from the real 1988 build! Pretty amazing video you shot here, thanks dude!
Almost all of the information published originally with that 1.5 million dollar car for sale has since been retracted or corrected elsewhere. It was a six flags car that had been restored.
And yes you're absolutely right about the head rests, and the differences on the moving cars and the process cockpit. I have not done a deep dive on the process car cockpit differences, but that might make for a fun video. Propstore published some really great high res pictures of the interior of theirs, which were great.
I am not at all convinced of the "electric car on set for returns because in-sound stage requirements" line of thinking. I think that was a post-hoc explanation for the 1.5 million dollar car or something like it. If someone can show me evidence of an EV batmobile on the set of returns, I'm totally happy to change my mind, but none of that makes any sense.
Like, they shot a fireball into a storefront and blew the thing up, and that was on a soundstage. How can that be OK but a gas burning car is not? lol. They blew up the Shrek's department store and that was on a soundstage. None of that makes sense. lol
That said, thank you for your post and contributions! Obviously, I love this topic and am always eager to be introduced to new facts :D
One thing that's interesting to me about this video is that starting at 2:06 it looks like you can see through the hinge of the little door that opens up to shoot the frisbee things. Behind the front wheel on the passenger side. Maybe it's just a misleading angle but it almost looks like this car doesn't have an engine.
Yeah I saw that. I think what's happening is this car does not have a lot of the structural stuff that you would find in a normal car. No wheel buckets on the front, oddly shaped firewall, etc. I cannot say for certain if there is currently an engine in there, but there are other explanations for why you can see into the engine cavity.
@@TheProjectWorkBench True, the structural layout of this car is unique. That said, the only times in recent years that I've seen a screen used 1989 Batmobile driving under it's own power it was the other car. The one with the Onstar Antenna on top. That was in 2003 for Looney Tunes Back in Action and then when they had all the Batmobiles out at Bob's Big Boy in 2012. Have you ever seen this KITH Batmobile driving? Not that it proves anything one way or the other, I just find it interesting.
I noticed that as well & it is strange & I also find it odd that the builders of the original 89 never mentioned or spoke of in a interview where the original they built is or what happened to it over the years or that there even was a second car built other than the MTV contest car thats out there somewhere. The history of the 89 & its copies is so vague & so many different stories of where they ended up.
I don't like that the gas fillers were added behind the small circular windows on the passenger sides. I think both a and b have them as well as dunhams car.
Yeah my treasure trove of photos shows the filler cap on both the A and B as they exist today. I do not consider Dunhams car in this video as I find many of the claims about it dubious, and I also have not had much firsthand experience with it.
whats the story with all the all the painted chrome and alloy parts like the wheels and fuel caps and front turbine now painted this new body colour? just a lazy restoration? the original dark titanium tinted clear looked better
From what I have pieced together (and I'm willing to be corrected on this) the car's original paint job was in the 89 movie, it was updated for Returns, painted Grey for the OnStar commercials, then repainted to this dark grey for the Flash movie.
The explanation is that it was a creative decision by whomever was using the car at that time. I would say it wasn't lazy restoration, just creative decisions.
It is a shame that it wasnt restored to what it was in the 89 movie, I dont think WB cares all that much
Jeff Dunham has the turn table car from returns he made it a functional car.
There seems no consistency behind the claims about his car, which makes it hard to pin its history down. Do you have a link to any video or photo that can support that claim? I'd love to see it! I always wondered what happened to the spinner car.
@TheProjectWorkBench it's in a video he did man must have been 10 plus years ago. Really wasn't a video he did it was an interview he was doing with somebody. I know he said there was a list of rules he had to follow giving him so that he can use the car.
Doesn’t Jeff Dunham own the B car? He’s on record and featured in the WB official Batmobile documentary of owning a screen used returns car?
I've seen jeff's car and heard him speak about it. It is not the B car. I'm not convinced it's a production made car, but it could be. He also says it's voice activated, which it clearly is not as he is using a remote in his pocket, so it makes me skeptical of all of the claims he makes about the car.
His car is still a great looking car and of course it's awesome and I wish it was mine :D
@ I think if it wasn’t production used it wouldn’t have been featured in the WB piece as they’d know I’m sure much more quickly than us fans to a degree if it was or not. If it wasn’t for that then I’d deff be skeptical as well sir.
@@stichhavoc88 It has screen _lineage_ with being an Ohrberg body (the guy who produced the stunt copies for Returns and then the narrowed trailer-fitting Six Flags cars) but as far as being made for or featured in any movie, that's a no. All that matters from WB's perspective is that he's a celebrity, who adds clout to the documentary, and WB's exceptionally poor archive of '89 materials (there's a reason they used ancient and inaccurate recast batarangs from eBay in The Flash) means they make a lot of mistakes and maintain plausible deniability. Just look at their consumer division's insistence that the '89 car was black, or that the speargun was a grapnel gun!
@TheProjectWorkBench his the one that had the bass lift the car and turn it around it was in the movie like maybe 30 seconds
@@pennygadget7328 Where did it come from then? This is all really interesting & I would really like to know how many were actually produced by WB & who built them for the movies & Six Flags & their whereabouts. Only proof ive ever seen is the original 89 & the copies made by Jay Ohrberg. You can tell in pictures which ones were made by WB & Jay & which ones are replicas but no way of knowing if its just the same car just in a different place.