Batmobile in a Tuxedo? It’s a 1958 Gaylord Gladiator!

Ralph Carungi calls his 1958 Gaylord Gladiator “The Batmobile in the Tuxedo,” a line Lou Costabile first heard at an invitation-only concours limited to 90 cars, and couldn’t forget. This is believed to be the first video ever made of the car, which Ralph considers a true one-of-one. But one commenter, who worked for designer Brooks Stevens, insists a second example was built and stolen off a European dock decades ago. So which story is true?

Lou Costabile met Ralph Carungi for the first time at an invitation-only concours limited to just 90 of the finest cars in the world, and one line from that conversation stuck with him for months afterward. Ralph had described his own car, black and white, impossibly sculptural, unlike anything else on the show field, with a single phrase Lou couldn’t shake. It would take until a return trip to Phoenix before the camera finally caught up with that car and that phrase. What Ralph called it isn’t just clever, it’s the whole reason this video exists, and there’s a very good chance you’ve never seen anything like the car underneath it.

The Batmobile in a Tuxedo

The phrase that hooked Lou Costabile was Ralph Carungi’s own description of his car: “The Batmobile in the Tuxedo.” Ralph said it back in 2016 at the Arizona Concours, held at the historic Arizona Biltmore Hotel, an invitation-only show that caps its field at just 90 of the finest cars anywhere. Lou didn’t get the chance to film the car that day, but the line stayed with him, and when he finally caught up with Ralph in Phoenix on January 18, 2017, the payoff was worth the wait. It’s an unusually apt nickname once you see the car in person: a two-tone black-and-white 1958 Gaylord Gladiator with a low, sculpted body that reads equal parts sinister and formal. Ralph’s phrasing captures both halves of that identity in four words, and it’s exactly the kind of quote that turns a walk-around video into something people actually remember and repeat in the comments section months later.

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A Name Built by Two Brothers From Chicago

The Gaylord Gladiator wasn’t a factory product from an established automaker, it was the creation of brothers Jim and Ed Gaylord, built in Chicago, Illinois, with the prototype debuting at the 1955 Paris Motor Show. Their goal was ambitious: compete directly with the finest luxury cars of the era, the kind of coachbuilt machines that wealthy buyers commissioned rather than simply purchased off a showroom floor. That context matters, because it explains why this car doesn’t look like anything mass-produced in Detroit during the same period. The Gaylord brothers were essentially running a boutique manufacturing operation, hand-building a small run of cars aimed at a customer who wanted something no one else on the block would own. Few American attempts at building a genuine low-volume luxury marque from scratch got as far as the Gaylords did, and fewer still survive today in condition good enough to be filmed, driven, and shown at an invitation-only concours nearly six decades later.

Is This Really the Only One?

Ralph Carungi believes his Gaylord Gladiator is a genuine 1-of-1, the only example of its kind left in the world. That claim gets complicated, though, by a comment from a viewer who once worked for Brooks Stevens, the noted American industrial and automotive designer, at his car museum. According to that commenter, Stevens personally said two examples of this second-generation, dual-headlight Gaylord were built, and both were shipped to Europe for a show, possibly in Paris or Geneva. One of the two was reportedly stolen right off the dock and has never been recovered. If that account is accurate, Ralph’s car may not be one-of-one after all, it could be the surviving half of a pair, with its twin still missing somewhere in the world, or lost entirely. Either version of the story is remarkable, and neither can be fully confirmed, which is exactly the kind of mystery that keeps a niche marque like the Gaylord fascinating to research decades later.

The First Video Ever Made of This Car

According to the information available on this specific Gaylord Gladiator, this is believed to be the first video ever made of the car. For a vehicle this rare, that’s a meaningful claim, it means every frame Lou Costabile shot in Phoenix that January day potentially represents the only moving-image documentation this particular Gladiator has ever received. Compare that to nearly any production Mustang or Camaro from the same era, which have been filmed, photographed, and cataloged thousands of times over. A coachbuilt one-off, or one-of-two, luxury car built by a small Chicago outfit in 1957 simply didn’t get that kind of exposure, especially once it left the auto show circuit and passed into private hands. That scarcity of documentation is part of why comments on this video read less like casual reactions and more like people encountering genuinely new information about automotive history in real time, including the Brooks Stevens anecdote that emerged directly in response to watching it.

10:55, the Horn Heard Round the Comments

Not every memorable detail in this video is about sheet metal. One viewer singled out a single moment, timestamped at 10:55, writing that it’s “the best sounding car horn I ever heard.” It’s a small thing, but it fits a car like this perfectly. A Gaylord Gladiator wasn’t built to blend in or to sound like anything else on the road; every detail, down to something as mundane as the horn, was an opportunity for the Gaylord brothers to make a statement about craftsmanship and distinction. That level of attention shows up throughout the car, from its two-tone black-and-white paint scheme to whatever engineering went into a horn note distinctive enough that someone bothered to timestamp it decades later in a YouTube comment. It’s a reminder that walk-around videos like this one reward patient viewers who watch the whole thing rather than skimming for the highlights.

Rolls-Royce Meets Studebaker, According to the Comments

Commenters had fun reaching for comparisons to place the Gaylord Gladiator in context. One called it a cross between a Rolls-Royce and a Studebaker Hawk, which captures both the formal luxury cues and the low, sporty greenhouse the Gaylord brothers gave it. Another compared it to “one of those one-off Ghia body Chryslers,” a nod to the era’s fascination with Italian coachbuilders reskinning American chassis into something far more exotic. A third viewer, riffing on the Batmobile comparison, joked that it’s “not the Batmobile, it’s the Penguinmobile,” a decent bit given the tuxedo-black-and-white color scheme. And in a lighter vein, one commenter admitted the car is beautiful enough to make you “convince yourself to buy something called a gaylord,” acknowledging the name’s unfortunate modern connotation without letting it get in the way of admiring the machine. Few cars invite this much cross-referencing to name-brand rivals it never actually competed against in period.

A Permanent Home at the Zeppelin Museum

One of the more valuable comments on this video comes from a viewer who lives near the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany, who notes that a Gaylord is on permanent display there and describes seeing the real craftsmanship of the car in person. That detail underlines just how far these cars traveled and how seriously they were treated by collectors and institutions outside the United States, even as the Gaylord name faded into obscurity domestically. It also lends some credibility to the idea that more than one example left the country in period, echoing the Brooks Stevens anecdote about two cars shipped to a European show. Whether the Friedrichshafen car is connected to that story or is a separate example entirely isn’t something this video can answer, but it adds another data point to the running mystery of exactly how many Gaylord Gladiators exist and where they ended up.

Why Ralph’s Car Still Turns Heads at Invitation-Only Shows

It’s worth remembering how this whole story started: Ralph Carungi’s Gaylord earned a spot at the Arizona Concours, a show that only invites 90 cars total, held at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. That’s not a field padded with ordinary muscle cars and restomods; it’s a curated group of the most significant vehicles collectors can find, and a hand-built 1958 Gladiator from a defunct Chicago outfit held its own among them. With nearly 78,000 views, this is the most-watched of the three videos covered here, likely helped along by just how strange and unfamiliar the Gaylord name is to most enthusiasts raised on Mustangs and Camaros. Between the disputed 1-of-1 status, the missing European twin, and a horn good enough to get its own timestamp in the comments, this is a car that keeps generating new questions every time someone rewatches Lou Costabile’s footage of it.

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