Pretty much everyone has a favorite Batmobile. The comic universe is full of blacked-out, finned vehicles designed to help Batman deliver justice. Each one seems to be more bombastic than the last. The same vibes made it over to the live-action films and shows, from the futuristic and whimsical first Batmobile built by George Barris to the dirty, jagged, beefy flame-spitting muscle car of the new Batman Saga.
Most of the time, if you want to have the same ride as the famed Caped Crusader you’d need to have one custom built. But not this time, as long as the Batmobile you’re after is the Lamborghini-meets-tank take on Bat’s crime-busting machine as envisioned by Christopher Nolan in his Dark Knight trilogy.
To celebrate 85 years of Batman, Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products and Relevance International are doing something a bit special. If you have enough cash in your pocket, and we’ll get to exactly how much is enough shortly, you’ll be able to buy one of 10 “Wayne Enterprises” Tumblers, complete with a real interior, a 6.2-liter LS3 V8 making 525 HP, and even a smoke-screen system.
Unlike most limited-run products (such as, let’s say, that Hot Wheels beater car that sold in an instant) the ten Tumblers haven’t been scooped up yet. So, if you’re a wealthy Batman superfan and you’re reading this, you still have a chance!
In the Dark Knight trilogy, the Tumbler didn’t start out as a tool to fight crime in Gotham City. According to the films, the Tumbler was a sort of jumping tank developed for the military. If a bridge was needed in a combat scenario, a Tumbler would use its jet engine to leap across a gap while towing cables. These cables would then be used to hoist up a bridge. In the movie, it’s said that the whole bridge thing didn’t work out, but the jumping did.
In real life, Christopher Nolan, Nathan Crowley, and the Batman Begins production team wanted to make the Tumbler as real as possible. Unlike most movie vehicles that are far more show than go (for example, the DeLorean time machine from the Back To The Future trilogy was made to appear faster in the movie than it was in real life and had the sounds of a more appealing engine dubbed in), Nolan wanted his screen machine to perform realistically for the camera.
John Holmes, then senior special effects technician, told Tech Radar: “The brief we got [for the Batmobile Tumbler] was for a vehicle that could do 60mph; we thought we’d give them a little bit more than that so we boosted it to 100mph, as we obviously wanted it to do some amazing things.”
According to the publication, it took a team of 20 people in the UK to design and build the film Tumblers. Reportedly, Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley created the initial design for the Tumbler by kitbashing models together. They were looking for a military vehicle with a touch of Lamborghini in it. The team first experimented with building scale models out of clay and Styrofoam before graduating up to full scale once they knew what they wanted.
From there, the team over in the UK had to build a vehicle that met or exceeded Nolan’s high expectations, including the ability to accelerate quickly and achieve top speeds over 100 mph. Nolan also required the vehicles to survive driving off a ramp, flying through the air, landing, and driving off in a single shot.
As Tech Radar reports, simply dressing a production car or truck chassis in Batmobile bodywork was not an option. Instead, the Tumbler was built on a custom steel frame engineered to accommodate the vehicle’s unique suspension and steering, massive wheels and tires (including 44-inch Interco Super Swamper dualies!), and a suitably powerful engine that would allow the 2.5-ton beast to reach 100mph.
“[The Tumbler] has a very odd suspension,” admitted Holmes. “It’s a tubular space frame chassis, with a 15mm section, with the front suspension being the trickiest part. The wheels actually go inward, where normally they would go outwards; in the same way the stub axles, instead of going outwards, they go inwards. That was a little bit tricky to create, so we had to make it all very beefy. If you think that the anti-roll bar on your car is very thin, the one on [the Tumbler] is like a girder.”
“The brakes were somewhat … reluctant … to work, shall we say. The brief was for the Tumbler to be able to do handbrake turns and stuff like that, so we rigged up a separate hydraulic brake so you could lock the rears up.”
The film Tumbler was powered by a 5.7-liter GM V8 tuned to 400 HP. Apparently, this was good enough to get the Tumbler to 60 mph in around 6 seconds and for a top speed of about 106 mph. The “jet” engine exhaust seen above did not produce any significant thrust, but the flames it belched were entirely real; the production team didn’t want to add the fire as an effect in post, so they installed a propane-fueled burner meant for hot air balloons to simulate a fiery afterburner.
The team built four full-size, functional Tumblers. Two were “drivers” that had fixed-position roof flaps and did not have the propane flame-effect gear installed, but were otherwise fully operational for depicting action on the streets of Gotham. A third Tumbler was outfitted with hydraulics to operate the roof flaps in shots depicting them moving, and the fourth had the balloon burner. The interiors of these Tumblers only had basic instrumentation rather than a full suite of Bat-gadgetry and were not equipped with the retracting roof panels seen in the film. For those shots, a fifth full-size Tumbler was constructed with a full interior and opening roof. This Tumbler was more prop than functional vehicle as it was only required to travel at low speed, which it achieved via a small electric motor. Based on the production story, it almost sounds like these recreations are even better than the film cars were.
The Replica
Action Vehicle Engineering is the party responsible for the limited run of officially-licensed Tumbler replicas and it sounds like they got it as close to the film as you could get without building actual jet-powered flying tanks.
The special edition Tumbler has a tubular steel frame and the body is made out of a variety of materials, including steel plates, Kevlar, carbon fiber, and fiberglass. Housed under the bulky body is a 6.2-liter LS3 V8 making 525 HP and 486 lb-ft of torque. Those thoroughbreds reach the wheels through a four-speed 4L85E automatic transmission with steering wheel paddle shifters.
These Tumbler replicas also get fully-appointed two-seat interiors with custom seats, Alcantara, an original dash, 10-inch Lowrance screens, one-way glass, 5-point harnesses, and GPS for both the driver and passenger. Warner Bros. Discovery also says you can get the seats custom-fit to your exact body dimensions. Though, weirdly, we do not get to see pictures of the interior.
The replicas will have a working smoke screen system as well as working flaps. However, the flame-spitting burner is non-functional. You get all of this in a machine measuring just over fifteen feet long and nine feet wide, weighing 5,511 pounds.
Sadly, there are a few caveats. For starters, none of the Tumblers will be road-legal. Yeah, you’ll have a GPS but won’t be able to really use it. That said, the Tumblers are known for having some of the worst outside visibility this side of a Chevy Camaro, so maybe you wouldn’t want to drive one on the street – but it would probably make a killer off-road toy with those 44-inch Super Swampers.
Oh yeah, it also costs $2.99 million, so you basically have to be Bruce Wayne rich just to afford the thing. But I suppose that part makes sense. The Tumblers are being offered as part of the Wayne Enterprises Experience, a bizarre luxury brand for wealthy people who wish they could be Batman. I mean, this is the brand that teamed up with Pininfarina to make four Batman-themed Battistas, even though that didn’t make much sense.
If you do have enough cash, or enough friends to add up to enough cash, “Wayne Enterprises” is looking for takers. Once you secure your place in line, you’ll get a numbered allocation, finalize the specs and pricing, and then you’ll wait about 15 months before you can tear up Gotham’s streets, or, uh, your backyard.
If you end up as one of those lucky ten, I’d love to get behind the wheel of this bad boy. A Batman Tumbler might be simultaneously the dumbest and coolest thing you could drive, and that’s crazy I can get behind.
(Images: David James / Courtesy of WBD)
Actually I’m kind of impressed that it only weighs 2,5 ton, it’s lighter than Cybertruck
I know a Batmobile from 1966 that holds all my childhood memories that can never be replaced.
If I was going to buy a Batmobile it would be the Lincoln Futura based one from the old TV show. That’s the only one I feel a connection too. This overpriced high polygon Cybertruck does nothing for me and I hope they remain unsold for years.
Actually the only “Batmobile” I really want is a BMW 3.0 CSL
“ Enterprises Experience, a bizarre luxury brand for wealthy people who wish they could be Batman.”
People spending that kind of cash on a toy for bragging rights don’t want to be Batman.
They want to be Tek Knight.
What’s the over/under on this thing having the actual build quality of a movie prop, as opposed to anything that would justify the asking price?
I’ve never really liked this Batmobile. I love the Keaton and West Batmobiles.
Ditto.
The Barris Batmobile was the peak of midcentury space age bubble tail-fin design to me as a kid. As a teenager, I dug the swoopy Art Deco streamline moderne throwback lines of the Burton/Keaton Batmobile. The scrambler looks too much like a rolling dumpster to me.
The Nolan one is supposed to look like a bat. Maybe if you take your glasses off, squint, and hang upside down you could see it. I prefer all 3 of the modern batman movies better. (Keaton was my favorite). The newest one is probably closer to the comics where the Batmobile was often a muscle car or sports car of some kind.
I’ve always thought the line where Batman asks Gordon if “he can drive stick” before giving him the Tumbler keys is right up there with “Danger to Manifold” in terms of brain cells killed.
As if a ridiculous rocket powered prototype tank *that you can drive from a prone position on your stomach* would have a good old TR6060 and a clutch pedal somewhere in there.
In my favorite tumbler-related daydreams, it 100% has a clutch.
Line cut from the final edit, “Don’t forget to disengage the parking break before driving off, Okay?!”
It was a joke, dude. At the same time he handed him the access stick.
I’d bet there’s SOMEPLACE in the US where you can maybe bribe or bamboozle a poor DMV employee into issuing some plates for this thing.
Florida maybe? Montana?
I feel like if I had “f you” money… why not? I would also in that case have a dirt track designed for this, as well as a nice garage/apartment combo built next to it (that would also store some other off road toys) so that I could spend one weekend a year there then forget about it for the other 363 days.
If Tracy thought replacing tires on his little BMW EV was expensive, he’s going to loose his lunch when he gets the bill for new rubber for the Tumbler.
I don’t know what the front tires are but the rears are relatively common off-road mud tires selling for ~850/ea. So, expensive, but not $10,000 Bugatti tires expensive.
Those front tires look very much like sprint car rear tires, which I’m guessing are pricey as well.
I can see some eccentric millionaire with a ton of land buying one of these.
Perhaps whoever buys this former Astro’s ranch can buy one. I suspect Matt may be asking Jason and David for a raise right about now.
Yeah.. No.
I’ll take the Robert Pattinson one (THE Batman), also if the jet engine has gone missing, it just has a more cool retro and understated feel to it.
But the the tyre rolling noise to car price ratio (is that measured in $ per dB?) on this one must be pretty great, no matter what it costs 😀
Oh yeah, I’m so into the Robert Pattinson one. It has that look of something built by a guy in a dark garage, which totally fits the vibe of the movie.
Looks easier to build as well 🙂
Where would you even drive it? It can’t possibly be street legal anywhere in the US, especially with a working smoke screen.
My first instinct is “wut” with respect to a four speed transmission, so can anyone offer any insight as to why that might be? It’s likely not very fast, and turning over those 44″ tires ain’t easy (mind, I’m not meaning to conflate ratios for number of gears, only noting that maybe it’s small set of relatively low gears rather than maybe bothering to go up to a 5th/6th tall gear), it seems like 4 gears would have this thing howling all the time. Right?
I didn’t see a top speed for the replicas so maybe it’s pegged at 60 mph and a non-issue.
Most likely the LS3 and 4L85E are just a package available from GM and no more thought was put into it than that.
Fewer gears = fewer things to break. Trophy Trucks use similar transmissions and they can hit 120mph+. Durability and robustness are the main reasons.
This drivetrain combo is pretty common throughout the custom off-road world because it’s reliable and parts are easy to find.
This is actually so silly that it reverts back to being cool. I would love to know someone psychotic enough to piss away 3 million on a toy with a smoke screen.
Every machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrongly enough.
I recall a seat heater that caught fire once,that sucker smoked even just sitting in the workshop..