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89 article
From: Kevin
| Posted: 6/19/2005 9:45:28 PM
|
89 article
I found this article on the BOTB, some of the specs differ from the article that was posted earler.......
1989 BATMOBILE – REAL STORY AND SPECS
Instead of accuracy, there've sometimes been various speculations about the real design and performance of the 1989 Batmobile. Following is at least what the L.A. Times reported about "The New Batmobile" on June 12, 1989, a week before the film came out.
The 1989 Batmobile’s movie career began in a London junk yard -- with the buying, stripping, stretching and recycling of two rusted 1968 Chevrolet Impalas into identical Batmobiles, the co-star and stunt double appear as one ugly urban battle wagon in the movie "Batman." With a Durante nose cone drooping from a circle of turbine blades, the car looks like it is pushed by a jet engine and is supersonic in second gear. It actually is powered by an elderly Chevy 327 V8 with automatic transmission, and, said production designer Anton Furst, the dummy snoot "came off a Rolls-Royce Olympus Spey engine . . . the turbine blades are from a Harrier (fighter-bomber) jet."
"We had 92.7 (m.p.h.) from the No. 1 car on a Ministry of Works test track," said John Evans, the special effects supervisor who built the cars. "Then it obviously began to shake a bit. The No. 2 (car) was a bit of a pig . . . very rough to drive." But what of afterburner flames shooting from the exhaust? "Air and paraffin (kerosene) mix released and ignited under pressure," Evans explained. Bodywork of armor-plated steel? "Kevlar," said Furst. “John Lovell, who does Group C racing cars mostly, did the bodywork."
And the slick, great brute of a Batmobile began life as a pair of beaters (reportedly the London leavings of homebound American GIs) Evans purchased from a junk dealer for $5,500 apiece. "It's quite a heavy film, actually, so we wanted a very heavy car, frankly, to go with it," Furst explained. "We went about that by thinking of it as an expression of the war machine . . . literally, he (Batman) uses it like a war machine, an extension of his armor, really." Furst says he only glanced at designs of earlier cars -- the original Batmobile as drawn in DC Comics, and its most famous interpretation, the double bubble-canopied Batmobile built for the 1965-68 television series. "We also didn't want to position it (Batmobile) in a particular period. What we did was take the Utah salt flats speed machines, we looked at the Corvette Sting Ray muscle cars of the '50s and we looked at the (automobile manufacturers') concept cars.”
"And then we looked at jet aircraft, in particular the Blackbird (spy plane) and the Stealth fighter and, from a book, new concept designs in Stealth aircraft." The Batmobile had to be low, large and intimidating. Wheels must be huge to imply power. Black fins, open pipes and sweeping lines would connote speed. A windshield with a central pillar, decided Furst, would create "a visor look, a knight in armor . . . more forbidding. We had a speedometer, rev counter (tachometer), all the normal engine gauges which came out from Ferrari. The rest of it was bulked with instrumentation from fighter aircraft -- some of it functioning, some of it not -- so that it (Batmobile interior) looked like the inside of a jet fighter more than a car." Integrity through actuality of components, Furst added, was the constant goal.
"We wanted to make it look as though it was made of real parts," he said. "That texture of the car really does come over in the film, you know . . . somewhere between a Sting Ray and an element of some of the Group C racing cars." Above all else, Furst continued, the cars had to perform: "There is no way that we could do what we had to do with the Batmobile -- complete car chase sequences with enormous stunt work involved -- without a very well-functioning car."
Twelve weeks before shooting commenced, the Batmobile, on paper, was handed to John Evans and his team. "We wanted something we knew that was proven, something with a good suspension, a good engine, and after a week of hunting we came up with the Chevrolets," he said. "They were runners, in good-enough condition, so we took them back to the workshop, stripped them and started working."
Frames of both cars were stretched by 30 inches and widened by almost two feet. The engine was dropped 12 inches to accommodate the low silhouette of the hood. The Batmobile's huge wheels and tires came from a California speed shop specializing in drag-racing equipment. Machine guns -- real machine guns accompanied for safety, insurance and legal purposes by their London armorer -- were mounted on hydraulic rams for raising through the Batmobile's front fenders. A second set of rams was installed in wheel hubs to spit out special-effects bombs. A rear-looking videocam became the car's functioning rear-view mirror. In three months, at a cost of $250,000, both cars were complete and in makeup and ready for action. One, the less agile of the performers, was kept in pristine condition for close-ups and routine action sequences. The other, said Evans, was used "whenever there was danger of the car getting hurt . . . at one time we had to drive through three-quarters of a mile of flames, 85 feet to 90 feet high, with explosions going off. Batman (played by Michael Keaton) hardly drove the car," Evans said. "Two of my lads who had the feel of the car did the driving."
The Batmobile also was driven by one person with no immediate feel for the car: creator Anton Furst. It was early on a Sunday when Furst and Evans visited the deserted set. Furst climbed into the Batmobile. Evans watched as he fired it up. "Twenty yards up the main street of Gotham City, he mounted the curb and took a `No Waiting' sign right out," Evans admitted. Furst confirmed his early retirement from a stunt man's career. "I managed to spin it in Gotham Square . . . and hit the City Hall with it," he said. "I'm afraid we did have to replace a section of the car. But City Hall was all right." Then there were times when the Batmobile turned on its fictional master. The problem was with the car's sliding roof. It was powered by an air-ram controlled by a ****pit button. Batman's procedure was simple: Jump in car, hit button, close canopy. On several occasions, the canopy swooshed shut and jammed Batman's pointy ears. Anton Furst on the Batmobile: "It's quite a heavy film, so we wanted a very heavy car to go with it."
Zane
From: Webmaster
| Posted: 6/19/2005 10:23:29 PM
|
RE: 89 article
Awesome article
From: Everett
| Posted: 6/19/2005 10:59:28 PM
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RE: 89 article
nice
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89 article 
