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Ford Reveals the Maverick LoboGeorge Barris’ Wildest Hollywood Custom Cars
From the original Batmobile to the Family Truckster, George Barris proved one of Hollywood’s most inventive and enduring car customizers.
Custom Cars Go Hollywood
Cars can play pivotal roles in movies, even in movies that aren’t by design “car movie.” Sometimes cars operate as plot devices, like the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Sometimes cars are characters themselves, like in Stephen King’s Christine. Of course, not every movie car is intended to be stock. For every Wayne’s World AMC Pacer there’s Ghostbusters’ Ecto-1. When filmmakers want something out of the ordinary, they call automotive customizers like the late George Barris.
If you don’t know the name, you’ll still surely know the work as George Barris had a hand in some of the most iconic and memorable movie and television cars of the 20th century. Despite dozens of projects over the decades, Barris’ most famous creation remains the 1966 Batmobile with its double-bubble cockpit glass and flaming exhaust.
George’s work on cars began over a decade earlier in the late 1940s when he and his older brother Sam Barris helped popularize custom car culture by chopping, channeling, and sectioning the bodies of Fords and Mercurys. Their most famed creation, the Hirohata Merc, was hugely influential on custom cars. Though Barris was known then and today for building visually striking cars, his early automotive work in Hollywood was not cosmetic. Instead, one of his first jobs was modifying one of the stunt cars for Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
Barris had a particular knack for the outlandish that served him well, especially for campy ‘60s television projects and comedies, as we’ll explore below.
Batmobile
The original Batmobile for the television series was as intentionally campy as the rest of the show with its on-the-nose dialogue, over-the-top villains, and all-caps ZAP! BANG! sound effects. This Batmobile had an interesting origin as the Lincoln Futura, a Ford concept car from 1954. Its double-bubble canopy the Futura’s most distinctive feature. Following its promotional stint, the Futura was mothballed, a less grim fate than that of most concept cars, which were typically sent straight to the crusher. Years went by before Barris ran across the car and bought it for one dollar. A steal considering the Ghia-built car had cost roughly $250,000 to create.
The Futura had sat for years more in Barris’ possession before he got a call from the producers of the new Batman television show. They needed a new Batmobile, as their first choice had fallen through, and Barris only had three weeks to deliver. Thankfully, the Futura’s singular design lent itself perfectly to the project. Among Barris’ embellishment were the Batmobile’s black and red paint scheme, the flaming jet exhaust, and 15-foot batwing fins.
Munsters’ Koach and DRAG-U-LA
The Batmobile wasn’t Barris’ first foray into building TV cars. He already done work on two cars for The Munsters, the Munster family’s Koach and the DRAG-U-LA dragster. The former, with design by Tom Daniel, was built from three Ford Model T and featured an exposed Ford 289 Cobra V8 augmented with ten carbs and ten airhorns. The DRAG-U-LA dragster was fashioned from real coffin and its gold side pipes from real organ pipes.
Beverley Hillbillies Truck
Another of Barris’ sitcom creations was the truck for the Beverley Hillbillies. See in the show’s opening credits, the Clampetts all piled in the 1921 Oldsmobile truck. Props for the Clampett truck included barrels of moonshine riding atop both front fenders, a large wooden bed frame laid across the back of the truck, even Granny’s rocking chair mounted in the rear.
Celebrity Golf Carts and Cars
In between television projects, Barris was kept busy doing commissioned work for celebrities. He designed and built custom golf carts for Bob Hope, shaped like Hope’s head, and for Elton John, with giant star sunglasses for a windshield. Barris also did custom car work for celebrities. These included Elvis Presley’s Cadillac limo, a pair of Mustangs for Sonny and Cher, a gold Rolls-Royce for Zsa-Zsa Gabor, and a Cadillac Eldorado station wagon for Dean Martin.
Snake Pit
The Snake Pit is one of the wildest of Barris’ custom creations, and that’s saying something. This six-wheeled car “aimed” for a fanciful top speed of 300 mph. Not that it didn’t have the power as Barris wedded six Ford Cobra V8 engines together for a total of 2,000 horsepower (hence the car’s name). The four-year build for the Snake Pit was claimed to have cost upwards of $100,000 in 1975.
The Car from The Car
The minor horror film The Car (1977), starred James Brolin and a sinister-looking custom Lincoln built by George Barris. The 1969 Lincoln Mk III was transformed into the movie’s namesake villain with a comically beefed-up body, a lowered roofline, and a gigantic double bumper. Barris’ tendency toward overstatement worked against the film’s horror conceit, as the car of The Car looked more cartoonish than frightening.
Golden Sahara
The Golden Sahara, created for the Jerry Lewis movie, Cinderfella, was built from a 1953 Lincoln Capri and showcased what Barris could accomplish when he wasn’t aiming for absurdity. Barris’ modifications included a revised front end with cowled headlights and golden Dagmar bumpers. The hardtop roof was chopped and given elevating gullwing-style roof panels. The car’s paint job was 40 coats of Oriental Pearl infused with fish scales to give it a sparkling finish. The interior featured a TV set into the dashboard and a pair of cocktail bars behind each of the front seats.
ZZR from “Out of Sight”
Long before Austin Powers was lampooning James Bond, there was 1966’s “Out of Sight” spoofing the self-serious spy. Barris built the movie’s ZZR hotrod from the leftovers of the Munster Koach (The Munsters having been canceled that same year). Like Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, the ZZR was fitted with all manner of super spy gadgets like a sleeping gas spewing fake flower, rear fender guns, and flip out “shin breaker” running boards. The obligatory rear-facing grease gun was next level, tarring and feathering would-be pursuers.
Wagon Queen Family Truckster
For National Lampoon’s Vacation, Barris built the one and only Wagon Queen Family Truckster, possibly movie history’s ugliest automobile. As car salesman Eugene Levy puts it, “You think you hate it now, but wait until you drive it!” Barris’ work in uglifying the Ford LTD Country Squire included a pea soup green paint job and lots of faux wood paneling. The Truckster also featured double quad headlights for a total of 8 headlights, 12 parking lights, and 4 turn indicators. Triple side louvers and a Queen’s Golden Crown insignia rounded out the ridiculous ride.
