Remember Adam West, 66 Batmobile Drag Car 427 Holman Moody Engine

Most Batman fans never knew George Barris built a Batmobile purely for drag racing, powered by a blueprinted Holman & Moody 427 side-oiler and driven by ‘Wild Bill’ Shrewsberry. It ran the quarter-mile in just over 10 seconds at roughly 120 mph while touring dragstrips across North America from 1967 to 1968. Here’s the real racing story behind Batman’s other car.

Somewhere between a Hollywood prop and an actual purpose-built race car sits a Batmobile that could genuinely embarrass a real muscle car at the drag strip. Most people who grew up watching Adam West swing through Gotham never knew that George Barris built more than one Batmobile, and one of them wasn’t for TV cameras at all, it was built to run a quarter-mile. What was hiding under that fiberglass bodywork, and just how fast could Batman’s car actually go?

A Real Drag Motor Under a Comic Book Body

The #4 Batmobile, the one built purely for drag racing exhibitions, came from the same fiberglass molds Barris pulled off the original 1955 Lincoln Futura-based car, but it rode on a lengthened 1966 Ford Galaxie chassis, stretched an extra 11 inches to fit everything it needed underneath. That’s not a detail Ford or Barris advertised heavily at the time, most fans assumed every Batmobile on tour was the same car, when in reality this one was purpose-built to be genuinely quick rather than just photogenic parked next to the Batcave.

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Faster Than You’d Ever Guess

Holman & Moody, the same shop building NASCAR-winning engines for Ford, blueprinted a double side-oiler 427 cubic inch V8 with twin four-barrel carburetors for the #4 car, and it was the only Batmobile replica that actually shot flames out of its turbine-style exhaust for the crowd. Behind the wheel, ‘Wild Bill’ Shrewsberry ran the quarter-mile in just over 10 seconds at roughly 120 mph, numbers that would hold up against plenty of genuine muscle cars from the era, all while touring dragstrips across the U.S. and Canada between 1967 and 1968 and even making a cameo in the actual Batman TV series. Not bad for a car built to sell toys and merchandise on the side.

More Prop Than Legend, or More Legend Than Prop

Most Batmobile replicas built during the show’s run were designed purely to look the part sitting still at car shows and parades, which makes the #4 dragster genuinely unusual, it had to actually perform under real racing conditions in front of paying crowds, not just roll slowly past a red carpet. Barris and Holman & Moody built a car that had to back up its looks with real quarter-mile numbers, and touring it at dragstrips across two countries for two straight years meant it had to hold up to real abuse, not just gentle parade laps. That combination of Hollywood spectacle and legitimate drag racing hardware is what makes this particular Batmobile worth remembering long after Adam West’s run as the Caped Crusader ended.

George Barris’s Empire of Movie Car Replicas

Barris built his career turning Hollywood concepts into rolling reality, and the Batmobile program was far from his only multi-car operation, he routinely built several versions of a single famous vehicle to handle touring, filming, and publicity duties simultaneously rather than risking one irreplaceable original. That approach meant a studio could keep a car on set for filming while an identical or near-identical version toured dealerships, car shows, and, in this case, dragstrips across the country. It’s part of why so many of Barris’s creations have complicated, occasionally confusing histories once collectors start trying to track every individual car decades later.

Why a Show Car Needed Real Racing Hardware

Touring dragstrips for real exhibition passes meant this Batmobile couldn’t get by on movie-prop engineering alone, it needed a chassis and drivetrain capable of surviving repeated full-throttle runs in front of paying crowds without embarrassing itself or, worse, breaking down mid-tour. Handing that job to Holman & Moody, a shop with genuine NASCAR pedigree, was a deliberate choice to make sure the car’s performance matched its outrageous looks rather than trading purely on novelty. That combination of legitimate racing hardware wrapped in an unmistakable pop-culture body is exactly what separates this car from ordinary show-only replicas.

A Character That Outlived Its Own TV Show

The Batman TV series itself only ran a few seasons before cancellation, yet the Batmobile mythology it created has proven remarkably durable, spawning new versions in film and television for decades afterward, each one chasing its own interpretation of what Batman’s car should look and perform like. That longevity gives a genuine 1960s touring car like this one an unusual kind of significance, it’s not just a piece of one TV show’s merchandise, it’s an early entry in a character-vehicle tradition that’s still being reinvented today. Few movie or TV props from that era carry that kind of ongoing cultural through-line.

Preserving a Car Built to Be Used Hard

Cars built for genuine touring and exhibition duty, rather than static display, tend to accumulate real wear that complicates restoration decades later, since parts get swapped, bodywork gets patched between stops, and originality can blur the longer a car stays in active service. Any restoration of a car like this one has to balance keeping the drag-proven mechanical components intact against returning the bodywork to its most recognizable touring-era appearance, a tension familiar to anyone who’s restored a genuine period race car rather than a garage queen. That’s part of what makes a well-documented survivor like this one so valuable to collectors who care about authenticity over a simple repaint.

One of Several Batmobiles Built for Different Jobs

Barris and his crew reportedly built multiple Batmobiles during the show’s production run, each one assigned to a different task, whether that meant sitting still for close-up filming, touring car shows for publicity, or, in this replica’s case, actually running quarter-miles in front of a paying crowd. Treating the character’s signature car as a small fleet rather than a single irreplaceable vehicle let the production keep shooting while other versions handled promotional duty simultaneously, a practical Hollywood solution that’s since made tracking each individual survivor a genuine challenge for collectors. That patience is exactly what separates a genuinely well-restored survivor from one that merely looks the part in photographs.

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