Should It Be Legal To Build A Batmobile?

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

The replica-car business is the authentic and despicable cloaca of the automotive world, attracting scammers, liars, shade-tree hacks, shady African fiberglass molders, soon-to-be-disappointed owners, and lawsuit-addicted former poultry farmers in equal measure. A quick glance at the Gotham Garage website won’t reverse your opinion of the game, but the company, and it’s tatted-up owner, Mark Towle, are at the center of a rather interesting lawsuit.

At the heart of the issue is the George Barris “Batmobile”, which appeared as the vehicular star of the campy Adam-West-led Batman television show. The aforementioned “Gotham Garage” builds replica Batmobiles and has delivered two of them so far. Since the original Batmobile is nearly fifty years old, wasn’t made in any volume, and isn’t currently being produced by anyone, it would seem to be fair game for the replica makers, who regularly manage to get away with copying more recent vehicles.

Not so fast! DC Comics is getting involved. The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop, but it boils down to this: The Batmobile is part of Batman’s distinct trade dress as expressed in products derived from DC Comics. The article is worth reading because both arguments seem at least partially legitimate.

The recently-reimagined The Lincoln Motor Car Company That Makes Motor Cars And Is A Company Despite Being A Brand In Real Life And Not A Separate Company At All hasn’t weighed-in on the issue yet, which seems odd because the Batmobile is basically just a Lincoln Futura. If they fail to get involved, and the decision goes against DC Comics, there’s every chance that the replica builders of the distant future could rip off the 2013 Lincoln MKZ. And you thought Tom Hardy wearing an odd facemask and some leather bondage gear was scary!

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • DrunkenDonuts DrunkenDonuts on Jan 06, 2013

    I'd like the Batmobile from the Christopher Nolan movies, please. And when traffic gets too awful, I'll take the one that flies.

  • Junebug Junebug on Jan 07, 2013

    The Black Beauty from the Green Hornet was way cooler and Bruce Lee could kick Adam West's butt any day of the week. As a kid watching both shows (Friday night buddy!) Batman was dumb, Green Hornet was - hey, this might could be true! However, I think a hit puberty way early just watching Cat Woman in that skin tight suit!

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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