A genuinely entertaining information graphic from, of all sources, CarInsurance.org: this exhaustive inventory of the many, many designs of the Batmobile over the years unearths a fun history most of us probably never suspected existed.
There are dozens of iterations here, and maybe what’s most interesting about the vast majority of them is not so much how each design reflects the ideas of its particular time (they do), but rather how little imagination is really at work throughout this long string of reinvention opportunities. The Batmobile is a blue-sky design brief if there ever was one, and yet time and again, these designs are little more than a mildly interesting variant on the notion of a hot rod or muscle car — basically the kind of ride a middle-aged guy buys when he gets divorced.
The exception, and the notable standout, is the “tumbler” design produced for Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.” This Batmobile is not only a novel departure from what came before, but it was actually inventive enough to inspire a real world tank design from a military contractor. Honest.
See the full, very, very tall graphic over at my friend David’s Mlkshk page.
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