Since his first appearance in Detective Comics in 1939, Batman has captured readers imaginations. While his stablemates in the DC universe like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern all possessed godlike powers, Batman only had his smarts, his determination, and an unlimited supply of money. It's the last part, the money, that has been the source of some of the coolest parts of Batman, such as the iconic Batmobile. There have been other superheros who have had special cars, the Green Hornet's Black Beauty, Wonder Woman's invisible jet, but nothing approaches the Batmobile for sheer coolness.

Over the course of the years the Batmobile has evolved to match the times or fit the medium that he's being portrayed in, but the custom ride has always remained a staple of the Caped Crusader's arsenal as he fights the costumed crime of Gotham. As a crime fighting tool and not just a sweet ride, it held some of Batman's greatest secrets. Then there's the creation of real world Batmobiles that are just as prone to becoming part of the Batman lore as the best fabricators and custom car builders in the world have taken a swing at making the fabulous Batmobile a real thing. Over time the Batmobile has built up its own legend, and its own story. Here are some things about the various Batmobile that you might not know.

20 The Icons

Since the creation of the Hirohata Merc with his brother creating the custom 'lead sled' look, George Barris was the premiere custom car builder and none other could bring the idea of the Batmobile to life like him.

To do so he bought a Ford Futura concept car from the Ford Motor Company for a dollar and spent $15,000 turning it from showcase car to crime fighting machine.

It originally was painted grey, but test shots convinced him that this was too bland and the shiny black paint was added. The end result cemented icon status for both the car and its builder.

19 The Tim Burton Batmobile has Asymmetrical Fins

For many people, the Batmobile for Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns feature films are the ultimate modern Batmobile and is by far the most replicated by fans. Like all Batmobiles it had Bat-themed elements on it, this time in the form of the large Batwing fins sticking out of the rear fenders of the car.

These were hand formed individually and as such have an imperfection in them, one fin being larger than the other. Batmobile toys were made from scans of the original and carry over the imperfection.

18 Jeff Dunham's Batmobile

One of the people who consider the Burton Batmobile a favorite is comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Dunham is most popular for his wide range of ventriloquist puppet characters each with their own catch phrase with his main puppet character Peanut.

This has given him the means to buy one of the original Batmobiles from 1989's Batman.

The screens in the prop car always worked and have been repurposed to be rear and side view cameras so that Dunham could actually register the car for road use. He even equipped it with a license plate that drops down when the car is turned on.

17 Fire Breathing Propane Batmobile

The Tim Burton Batman movies were well loved by fans, but parents who had grown up on a campier more friendly Batman of the 1966 TV series were concerned about the darker and more violent tone of the Batman movies.

To create a more family friendly Batman Burton was replaced with Joel Schumacher and Micheal Keaton was replaced with Val Kilmer. For this all new Batman, an all new Batmobile was created. This one was driven by a propane powered engine and was able to shoot flames out the back up to 25 feet. While cool, it didn't capture the same imagination as the Burton car. It was saved from being the most hated Batman movie by the one that followed it.

16 Batman & Robin Roadster

Easily the most derided Batman appearance is the George Clooney outing in Batman & Robin. Stiff acting, ridiculous plots and stunts, and super hero suits with too much anatomical detail are the most often noted details that make this movie the one that temporarily killed the Batman franchise.

Lost in all of that noise was an actual one of a kind Batmobile.

The open top roadster driven by Clooney's Batman was the only single seater Batmobile in existence.

Robin was given a motorcycle to get around on instead of riding with the big guy.

15 The Tumbler

When filmmaker Christopher Nolan took on the Caped Crusader he took a decidedly different approach than Tim Burton. While Burton created a comic book inspired world around Batman, Nolan tried to adapt Batman to a 'real world' trying his best to create a 'realistic' Batman.

When it came time to create a Batmobile, they wanted to create something that was a combination of a Lamborghini and a tank. The Tumbler shares the angular body panels that are popular on modern Lamborghinis with the burliness and size of a tank. It also has the distinction of the only physical Batmobile to never be referred to as the Batmobile.

14 All Tumbler, No Animation

Christopher Nolan has a particular philosophy in his filmmaking. He tries to capture as much as he can 'in camera' on the set. Anything he can't he'll get in miniature and only then will he use computer graphics or 'CGI'. This means that all of the stunts that you see the car perform were performed by the actual Tumbler.

The custom built ride had to be built to survive and perform the dynamic stunts in the Nolan trilogy. This added to the kinetic and  visceral feel of the Nolan Batman movies and made them feel like they were taking place in a real world.

13 Batman's First Car

Everyone remembers their first ride. While for most of us it was a hand me down or well used car of dubious quality and coolness--mine was a bright yellow 1977 Malibu Classic--Batman's alternate identity Bruce Wayne is rich. The first appearance of Batman was also the first appearance of the Batmobile though it wouldn't be called that for several issues.

Never the less, the Batmobile was there in the form of what closest resembles a Cord 812 Supercharged.

The Cord had a lot of innovations from its hidden headlights, front wheel drive, and hidden hinges on the doors. The most noticeable element of the car, however, and what gives away the basis of the original Batmobile, is that coffin nose.

12 Batman Has a Mechanic

One of the big questions of Batman is how he's able to construct and maintain all this specialized equipment in secret and still have time to be a billionaire playboy and crime fighter. There's only so much that the loyal Alfred Pennyworth can do.

Some of that is done by Lucious Fox, the researcher that funnels unique inventions to Wayne to use as Batman, but at various points in time Batman has also employed the use of a mechanic named Harold Allnut. Harold was a mute with a hunchback that had been forced by Penguin to create gear and later recruited to build and maintain Batman's cave of goodies including the Batmobile.

11 The First 'Real World' Batmobile

There were two Batman serials before the 1966 TV series, but due to the low budgets of those movies they featured stock rides as the Batmobile. For the first film it was a 1939 Cadillac and the second it was a 1949 Mercury. This is the same model that George Barris and his brother would modify to become the legendary Hirohata Merc that would lead to him making the Batmobile for the TV series.

Before that, however, there was another Batmobile built on an Oldsmobile Rocket 88 by Batman fan Forrest Robinson in 1963.

It was licensed to DC comics and used to promote a brand of milk that had used Batman in its advertising. Once the Barris Batmobile was made it was returned to Robinson who used it as a daily driver until it was sold and then left to rot. It was eventually restored in 2013 by Borbon Fabricators in Sacramento, California.

10 The Tumbler Fender Bender

Batman is known for taking down criminals with colorful themes who commit elaborate crimes. In the real world, however, Christian Bale's 'realistic' Batman managed to take down a rather common criminal.

While filming in Chicago it was easier to just drive the Tumbler down the street to the next location than it was to load it on a trailer. A drunk driver without a license saw this and was not prepared. According to Bale talking to Sci Fi Wire News:

"There was even this guy who crashed into it, this poor drunken guy who didn't have a license. [He] said he got so panicked when he saw the car that he thought aliens were landing, and he put the pedal to the metal."

9 Micheal Keaton's Batsuit Didn't Fit His Batmobile

The reality of a effects heavy movie like a Batman film is that several different teams work independently on individual elements that will make up the entire movie. It is the effects coordinator's job to make sure that the director's visions is uniform across these different artists and fabricators.

Occasionally, though, something slips. In the case of Tim Burton's Batman, that came in the collision of costuming and the car builder. The ear cowls on Keaton's suit where too tall for the roof to close on the car and had to be shortened before filming.

8 The Barris Original Sold for $4.6 million

In 2013 George Barris auctioned off the very first Batmobile he made for the TV show out of that Ford Futura concept car.

A few years previous the Aston Martin from Goldfinger had set a record for movie cars selling for $4.6 million, and lucky buyer Rick Champaigne managed to tie that record when he went to the Barret Jackson Auction specifically to come home with the car he watched as a child.

According to the Hollywood Reporter when asked what he would do with the street legal crime fighting car he said, "I'm going to tear down a wall and put in my living room."

7 The Tumbler is Legitimately Fast

As covered earlier, the Tumbler performed all its own stunts in the Christopher Nolan Batman series. To achieve this the British team responsible for the car created the entire thing from scratch. Where previous Batmobiles were built on existing cars, the Tumbler was completely unique.

Nolan had requested that the car be capable of 60mph and be able to jump off a six foot ramp, land, and drive off without cutting.

For the first part of that request they gave him a little extra, thanks to a GM 5.7 liter GM engine putting out 400hp that could drive the Tumbler to 100mph. In fact it was so fast it at one point out ran the camera truck filming it.

6 George Barris' Batmobile Gets Pulled Over

The Tumbler isn't the only Batmobile that has functional parts. The George Barris Batmobile featured a Batphone as well as oil sprayers made from lawn sprinklers that really functioned. Made in the 1960s, a high point in drag racing during a period that featured some wild custom drag racers like a pickup with the body reversed and one that looked like a bathtub, the jet powered Batmobile featured drag inspired parachutes that really deployed and really did slow the car down.

There are two versions of a run in with police that Barris had testing the chutes on public roads, one where he was given a pass and the other where he was given a ticket.

5 Rolling Crime Lab

In the narrative of Batman, especially in the comics, the Batmobile is capable of doing whatever Batman needs to move the story forward. Just like Superman slowly started accumulating powers over the run of Superman comics, so to did the Batmobile.

In his role as the greatest living detective, most of those functions are to bring his crime lab with him on the road so that he can evaluate evidence without having to go back to the Batcave. Fingerprinting, chemical breakdowns and more can be done from the driver's seat. It is even known to carry backup suits for both Batman and Robin.

4 The Batmobile Was Second to Get the Batmoniker

While the hot rod red Cord Batmobile appeared alongside Batman in his first outing in Detective Comics it was not for several issues that it would be referred to as the Batmobile. In fact, it was another famous Bat-ride that would start the Bat prefix naming scheme in the more dramatically designed Batgyro, the precursor to the Batplane.

The Batgyro coincided with Igor Sikorsky successfully flying the first helicopter, but the Batgyro looked more like the autogyros of the time, fixed wing aircraft with a undriven rotor on top that allowed them to take off in short distances and land without runways. When Batman got his own comic, the Batmobile got a name.

3 In Some Iterations it is a Tank

For the casual fan of Batman, the Tumbler was a stark change in what the Batmobile was. For those who grew up on the customized Futura or the low slung Batmobiles of the 80s and 90s with their landspeed car inspiration the Tumbler seemed to come out of left field.

In the comics, however, the Batmobile has gone through several dramatic iterations since that first Cord. Sometimes they're inspired by real world cars like the ram cowl clad Tatra or one that resembled a C3 Corvette in the 70s. For Frank Miller's landmark Dark Knight Returns the dystopian set Batman drive a legitimate tank.

2 There's an Actual Jet Powered Batmobile

For all of the real function of all the movie Batmobiles one thing has always been just for show. The jet exhaust on all of the Batmobiles in the films have been powered by propane tanks that shoot flames out the back to give the impression that the car is being propelled by a jet engine. For Ohio restorer and race car builder Casey Putsch went one better.

After buying a turbine engine from a surplus helicopter drone, he spent the next five months installing it in a 1989 Batman replica.

The end result was that the 365 hp tube frame and fiberglass creation had the same power to weight ratio of a Dodge Viper and according to newatlas.com, is capable of hitting 60 in 3.9 seconds.

1 The Animated Batmobile is a Hybrid

The jet engine, outside of Casey Putsch's creation, has always been a bit of a nod and a wink as no one ever dealt with the exactly how a jet powered car functioned driving through a dark city. It was never really clear what atomic batteries were or what it meant that they were at power.

We just took it for granted that the Batmobile went and it had  jet engine out the back. In the animated series that followed the Tim Burton Batman movies the car often featured the sound of a burbling V8 and would lay rubber out the rear tires.

It was eventually revealed that in the cartoon the car had a regular piston engine that drove the car most of the time with the jet engine providing extra boost when needed.

Sources: businessinsider.com, hollywoodreporter.com, scpr.org & 1966batmobile.com