The first Batmobile aims to be the next auction hero

Bet you didn't see this one coming. This modified Oldsmobile - believed to be the world's first official Batmobile - is coming up for auction in America.

1963 Forrest Robinson Batmobile. (Heritage Auctions)

You see, a few years before the TV series kicked off in the mid-Sixties, a man named Forrest Robinson decided to profess his love of Batman in the only way he knew how. By dismantling a car and remaking it in the image of the Caped Crusader's own whip.

Hardened Batman fans will remember that the original Batmobile was just a teardrop coupe from the 1930s, taken from the comics.

So Forrest (you're better than those Bubba Gump Shrimp Company jokes, you really are) started with a 1956 Oldsmobile frame with the classic ‘Rocket' 324 V8 engine underneath, slashed away the body and attached his own custom design.

The whole thing ended up measuring over five metres in length and over two metres in width, including the fin, ‘bat-nose' front end and pocket sliding doors. Upon presumably declaring ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!', Robinson painted it silver and used it as his personal car.

Then, of course, the Batman TV series began, and the public went a bit bat-sh-, well, you know what. Forrest's creation was bought up by a DC Comic Books company, repainted in official Bat colours and used for a short promotional campaign.

But then George Barris's car came good, and Forrest's one ended up being sold for just $200, before it lay abandoned for nearly 50 years. It was recently discovered, renovated and tarted up for sale.

It's being offered by Heritage Auctions, with bids starting from $90,000. That's lot for an old, um, Oldsmobile, true, but remember: it's not who you are underneath, but what you do, that defines you...

BBC News