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November 5, 2015 7:00 PM   Subscribe

The Car, Thunder Charger, Plymouth Barracuda SSXR, Supervan, Batmobile, AMX-400 all rolled out of Barris Kustoms, home of car customiser and fabricator George Barris who passed away today at age 89.

Previous discussion on the Barris Batmobile.
posted by Mitheral (22 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by Mitheral at 7:01 PM on November 5, 2015


I've a picture of my son sitting in the driver's seat of the original Barris Batmobile...

Chuck was a fantastic designer....
posted by HuronBob at 7:11 PM on November 5, 2015


Just like my discarded Wacky Packs, another chunk of my 1970s childhood is gone. Wish I knew where my Hot Wheels Barris cars went.

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posted by JoeZydeco at 7:43 PM on November 5, 2015


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Love his work.
posted by AugustWest at 7:47 PM on November 5, 2015


Found it... the kid in the Batmobile...
posted by HuronBob at 7:53 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


We had a set of those Barris Cars trading cards way back, the Voxmobile and the Munster Coach come to mind. Which also starts to remind me of those really weird hot-rod comics from around the early 1970's...
posted by ovvl at 8:10 PM on November 5, 2015


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posted by Zedcaster at 8:36 PM on November 5, 2015


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posted by buzzman at 8:47 PM on November 5, 2015


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posted by newdaddy at 8:53 PM on November 5, 2015


My dad took me to a car show in the early 70s to see the Batmobile. The one they had was painted matte black. I thought it was phony. Only much later did I come to understand that it was in fact one of the originals, and the purpose of the finish was to defeat glare.

A few years ago I saw a replica during Car Week in Monterey, CA. The builders took molds off one of the original TV cars. They built it on a Corvette chassis, so the wheelbase was narrower than the original. Other than that the details looked great.

It's still my all-time favorite car.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 9:02 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Guardian article mentions that he was personally involved with the creation of the plastic models of some of his cars. If I had a dollar for every Aurora Batmobile kit I built back in the 60's, I'd have, well, six or seven dollars. And every single one of them fell victim to M-80 or Cherry Bomb explosions. They were blown up because they were so COOL! Nobody made cooler cars than George Barris.
posted by TDavis at 9:05 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


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posted by clavdivs at 9:13 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh wow that AMX-400 is the hotness.
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:47 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


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posted by Smart Dalek at 10:26 PM on November 5, 2015


George Barris, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and hot rods and custom cars in general occupied a disproportionate amount of my preteen brain-space, before I was actually old enough to drive.

Of course, once I got my license, I was happy to drive just about anything that ran. But to this day, owning several cool custom cars - maybe even a '66 Batmobile replica! - is one of my win-the-lottery fantasies. (To give you a sense of the gap between those fantasies and my real life, please note my current vehicle is a 10-year-old Toyota minivan.)

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posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 1:31 AM on November 6, 2015


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posted by Thorzdad at 4:48 AM on November 6, 2015


Beatnik Bandit.
posted by bukvich at 5:29 AM on November 6, 2015


His shop was next to the Arco on Lankersheim and Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. As a kid, it was cool to go visit my grandmother and see one of the famous cars in the window.

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posted by sideshow at 6:26 AM on November 6, 2015


When I was in about 4th grade I got a book on Barris called Cars of the Stars or something similar; This may be it; the publishing date is about right but I don't remember that cover. I specifically remember a peach colored sports car he built for David Carradine (with an actual peach as the color sample). Carradine was too tall so sit in it comfortably, so Barris removed the seats and the drive sat on a pillow or something similar. Not sure if that would pass muster today. I also remember the pizza wagon he made for the Singing Defranco Family; complete with working oven! Redd Foxx got a wild ride from him too. More examples here. Then there was the time The Raspberries gave one of his cars away. As a quick glance at his website shows, pretty much any TV series from the sixties on that had a custom car in it probably had the Barris do the work; the Munsters, the Monkees, The Beverly Hillbillies, and so on.

Truly Klassic with a capitol "K".
posted by TedW at 7:06 AM on November 6, 2015


I'll bet the funeral procession is going to be epic.
posted by pjern at 7:22 AM on November 6, 2015 [3 favorites]


Holy shit.

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posted by Rock Steady at 8:10 AM on November 6, 2015


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posted by marienbad at 8:28 AM on November 6, 2015


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