66 Miata Batmobile Build

It's an awesome looking car, but driving around with a wood, foam and filler frame bolted to your car couldn't possibly be the final answer.

You need to break it down into components; left/right fenders, hood and nose (and rear quaters, trunk and tail, when you get to those), then have molds made and make fiberglass casts. Even if you have to work with someone else, due to your allergies. Then, once you have feasible casts, find a miata forum and offer them as a kit.

People spend thousands on those kit cars, turning fox body mustangs into 60's cobras or pontiac fieros into lamborghinis. Who knows, you may have an untapped market.

-Fred

Being that I am an Austinite with car experience (WyoTech class of '05!) I'd definitely be willing to provide a helping hand. I was thinking about this build when that crazy rain came through, and I'm sorry to hear that the car got schwacked so badly. I'm with the consensus that you need to get the shape up to par, and have it glassed in.

This car looks great! don't let it die.

Also, just curious, why do you need to add oil every 1000 miles? That sounds like an engine issue that needs to be addressed.

Duuude... My heart broke for you when I read about your water issues. I hope you don't let this discourage you too much. It's an awesome build, and you've done an incredible job so far.

Is this project muerto? I was hoping for some good news after that last setback.

I believe this could well be the coolest thing I've seen on the RPF. Epic with nothing = everything we are here for. Nice work man. Hope what ever troubles your having are sorted soon.

Back from the dead.

The 66 front end has been in my shed for the last year.

I took a year off from the project.

In July I was on vacation in Amsterdam when I got an email from a lady making the Batmobile documentary for the Dark Knight Rises Blu-Ray.
She said she wanted to feature fan-made Batmobiles, and wanted me to send her footage of mine!
Well I got all excited and was walking around Amsterdam with Batmobile on the brain, making plans to throw it back together when I got home, put on some temp fins and shoot some cool footage.
Alas, only a few days later she sent me another email stating that between the legal departments at DC and Warner Bros. they decided not to feature any fan built Batmobiles in the documentary because they weren't sure where they stood on these things legally.

In the mean time, over the last year I've been imagining ways I could move forward with the 66 design myself, with new materials, a new approach, or perhaps move on to Batmobile Beta, a completely new and original design.

NEW MATERIAL IDEAS:

Aluminum:
I got some sheet aluminum, a pop riveter, a small bending brake and sheet metal shears. I did a test panel and was encouraged by faceted riveted aluminum. For the 66 design, I could cut off the paper/glass panels and use them as a pattern for aluminum panels that would all rivet together like an airplane/airstream.

Lexan:
I haven't tested these materials out yet, but an idea for a new design would be to use corrugated Lexan panels (Polygal is the brand name, it's corrugated like cardboard) for the skeleton of a new design, and use .030 sheet lexan panels riveted together and to the frame for the skin.
To keep the lexan from cracking at the rivet points, I'd drill slightly oversized holes and put a rubber and then aluminum washer on the backside. That way the rivet would mushroom behind the lexan and not inside the hole.

If a Lexan skin didn't work, I could use the Polygal for the skeleton and aluminum for the skin.

Again, the result of both these methods would be airplane style - slightly faceted, riveted with seam lines, but I've always liked that look.

NEW DESIGN:
So over the last year I've played with different, new, original designs for a Bat-Miata. My goal was to create an original design composed of a minimum number of separate modules, each consisting of one simple shape that could be easily faceted out pepakura style.
I've worked out a design that I like a lot.

Here's what I call Bat-X:















The Maquette is sculpted with black sculpey III on a 1:10 RC body.

I can't decide whether I like one fin or two fins better. The way I have it designed, I could have a set of each and swap them out.

The nose got a little long in the sculpt because I was fitting it over the stock miata bumper. For the big sculpt I'd remove the front bumper and shorten the nose to better match the cartoon version.

So I'm thinking about attempting this design with a riveted sheet style.
The skeleton frame would be made out of 1/4" Polygal panels, and the skin would (hopefully) be riveted sections of .030 Lexan sheet. (If not Lexan, then .025 aluminum sheet).
This would make for an Ultralight kit I could build all by myself a little at a time, that would be entirely modular (ten modules including the fins), that would be impervious to moisture/humidity and not involve any chemicals other than CA superglue to tack weld pieces together before riveting.

If I choose to attempt this design, I would build the fins first and mount them to the miata. Then I'd drive around for a month and make sure the materials are going to work for the project.
If I liked the result and wanted to move foward, I'd then build the modules from the back foward (trunk, tail-lights, rear quarters, hood, front fenders, bat-head.) All these units would be sculpted separately.

Why not keep going with the 66 design? Well, I'm a bit traumatized by my experiences with the 66 design. I do have the option, of course, of building the Bat X rear half, then re-faceting the 66 front half with Lexan, cutting out some of the dead weight, changing how it mounts and using it.
The skeleton and the sculpt, after all, are still good beneath that cardboard skin.

As always, any thoughts and ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

Go two fins. Awesome to see this project revisited!

You know what, I think this is just terribly fun!! LOL!! Keep us posted!!

Here's a sketch of how I imagine the frame and skin plates would all be held together:

I liked the first one better you had a real nice start but I think you need to upgrade to materials like fiberglass and carbon fiber. You could use the first one for a mold to pull a part for the new one just a suggestion.

So that's one vote for sticking with the 66 design.

I've been working on getting patterns made from the new sculpt.
I tore apart and deli sliced the driver's side and scanned the individual pieces.
I used clay, popsicle sticks and a laser level to get a base-line vertical or horizontal on each piece before scanning. I then alligned and traced the scans in Photoshop. I will probably do the final patterns in Illustrator.











Also, there was an 89 replica in the park last weekend. Fun to see.

Here are some screenshots of the cleaned-up patterns drawn from the scans of the chopped up maquette.







Any more votes for the 66?
I'm curious to hear any specific thoughts or ideas on the new original design.

This is the most incredible build I've seen here!!! Fantastic

Thanks Kcghostbuster,
I like how you put 'vision' in quotation marks.
That kind of sums it up.

I recently produced a screenprint called 'The Batmobile'.
It's an improvised imagined history of the car, drawn entirely without reference, and also while drinking.

So for better or worse I guess it's a catalog of my vision of the Batmobile gestalt.

creebobby said:

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Thanks Kcghostbuster,
I like how you put 'vision' in quotation marks.
That kind of sums it up.

I recently produced a screenprint called 'The Batmobile'.
It's an improvised imagined history of the car, drawn entirely without reference, and also while drinking.

So for better or worse I guess it's a catalog of my vision of the Batmobile gestalt.

That's awesome! If you have t-shirts made I'll buy one

I REALLY like the front end on your new version, and the design as a whole, but I am a sucker for that style of Batmobile (shades of New Batman Adventures). However, your chibi-66 design is great too. So I refuse to vote in either direction

Thanks!
There are screenprints of it up on Nakatomi Inc.
It's called the 'Flying Mammal Fin-Moto Print'.

Hadn't thought of doing a t-shirt run but that's a good idea! . . . .

I did want to share this:

Japanese Fin 66 Rear

Before designing the Bat X I worked up the basic patterns for a 66 rear with a 'Japanese style fin', based on some of my favorite drawings from the 66 Bat-Manga, combined with a more simplified, slightly shorter, more sports-car like (think 57 corvette with fins) styled rear to match the 66 front.
It would still have an inverse v-tail and the 59/61 Thunderbird rocket tail-lights.

if I built this rear end I would rework the front that I already have according to the following plan: cut off the cardboard skin plates and make patterns of them, remove the wheel well flare / 2" side buldge, resculpt those areas in foam (and while I'm at it cut out, off and away any possible extra weight on the front end frame), reinforce and clean up the reworked frame with 1" strips of .023 aluminum, then re-skin the front with riveted .023 thick aluminum sheet (or .030 Lexan sheet if a test proves that it would work.)

So glad this build is back from the dead, and I really like the drunken bat-history sketches too.

As for which to build, I'm a sucker for the '66, but it depends on what effect you're going for. A miata/66 mash-up is definitely a stylized caricature, and there's nothing wrong with that, I personally love it, but it'll always be "cute."

On the other hand, if you go with your original comic-styled version, you may be able to make the car much more "realistic." It won't have the effect of being distorted to fit the miata, so it can look more like a purpose-built comic-adapted batmobile. On the down side, the general public knows the TV and movie ones as the "real" batmobiles. But everyone will still know it's a batmobile of some kind.

So yeah, cute and familiar, or serious and more obscure. I still lean '66, but build it for your inner child, not mine.

I just like the work you had done so far and it sucks to see all you've started go to waste as for the 66 I always loved the thing since I was a kid highlight of my cali. trip a few years ago was I got to meet George Barris and actually sit in the original 66 in the back of the shop can't fully describe it, it's one of those things few people ever get to do

I guess 'started' is the key word.
The skin that's on the 66 front is not viable - it's heavy and lumpy and susceptible to moisture (and sun) and to use the front I have for anything more than a parade I'd need to tear down and rebuild at least the entire skin with a durable, stable material.

Yesterday I wanted to see how hard it would be to remove the cardboard skin plates one at a time and use them as patterns for a new skin.

Turns out it's impossible. They're glued to the frame, they're glued to each other, they're completely stuck to the foam I used to fill the frame, and they're extremely hard and brittle because of the glazing of polyester resin.
The skin comes off in little chunks at best, and I have to chisel them off with a hammer and pry bar.

One chunk led to another and I tore down the driver's side. I also cut off the driver's side wheel well flare and side buldge. (If I continue with the 66 front I want to streamline the side like the comic version with no flared wheel well or big side buldge. That would take some resculpting of course, but then I could build a smaller more streamlined rear end to match, or, if I built the Bat X rear, it would match the streamlined 66 front.)

All in all from the partial tear down I'm getting a clear impression that it might make more sense to start over with a new simpler design and new materials.
But I'm not going to scrap this front end yet. When I get the chance I'll finish the tear-down and keep the skeleton under a tarp for now.

very excited to see this resurrected!

Me too! Let me know if you need help, fellow Austinite! I'm always willing to throw in a helping hand.

Austin for the win!