Two of the biggest automotive news stories in January were the introduction of the all new seventh generation Corvette Stingray and the $4.62 million sale?of the Batmobile from the 1960s television series at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction. I wonder how many people observing either of those events knew that those two cars have something of a common heritage?
With the production Corvette Sting Ray, along with Corvette concept cars like the 1959 Stingray racer, the Mako Shark I & II and the Manta Ray designed under his direction, it?s fairly well known that GM styling chief Bill Mitchell, a deep sea fishing enthusiast, was influenced by sea creatures. It?s said that GM designers based the color scheme of the Mako Shark concept on the mounted shark hanging on the wall of Mitchell?s office, a shark he caught off Bimini, in the Bahamas. According to Michael Lamm and Dave Holls?s encyclopedic book on American automotive styling, when in styling review meetings if Mitchell didn?t like the front end of a car, he?d say that it looked ?like a grouper fish.? That?s a criticism that was valid with the hideous ?Packardbakers? and many think it applies to the Pagani Huayra today. What?s not well known is that the same 1952 fishing trip that ultimately resulted in the Corvette Sting Ray (and C7 Corvette Stingray as well, I suppose), also influenced another iconic car, the Batmobile.
In 1952, Mitchell was running the Cadillac studio, but he wasn?t the only guy named Bill in Detroit who was in charge of designing luxury cars. Over at Ford in Dearborn, Bill Schmidt was the Lincoln-Mercury division?s head stylist. In 1940, Schmidt started training to be a draftsman at Henry Ford?s Ford Trade School. Within a couple of years, his talent was spotted and he was picked by Bob Gregorie to join his small team in the Ford styling studio.
Schmidt was a talented and forward-thinking designer who had a role in the design of most Lincolns in the early 1950s. He was in charge of the update of the 1950 and 1951 Lincolns, the overall design of the 1952 Lincoln, the 1953 Lincoln XL 500 show car, and the 1956 Lincoln. No disrespect to Mr. Schmidt, but early ?50s Lincolns have not been the most memorable or enduring designs in automotive history. However, he was in charge of what may have been the most notable and famous concept car that Lincoln, or Ford for the matter, ever made, the Lincoln Futura.
Of course, the Futura ended up becoming the Batmobile that George Barris had built for the 1960s television show, so it?s easy to think that the Futura is only known because of its connection to the Caped Crusader?s wheels. However, there was a reason why the car ended up in Hollywood. It was probably the most famous concept car that Ford made in the 1950s.
At a cost of 250,000 1954 dollars, Ford had Ghia build the Futura on what was a modified 1953 Lincoln chassis originally intended for the canceled retractable hardtop Continental Mark II. It was revealed at the 1955 Chicago Auto Show in January, followed by the Detroit show and then New York. As a publicity stunt, Schmidt and Benson Ford took the car on a drive from the UN Building to Central Park. It was wildly successful, when you consider how futuristic the Futura looked compared to the cars on the streets in 1955 and how much publicity that generated, though Schmidt and Ford were sweating due to the car?s acrylic plastic canopy and a failure of the air conditioning system.
After the New York show, the Futura continued to be on the show circuit for years, in addition to being shown at Lincoln-Mercury dealers around the country, as was the practice then with show cars. When it wasn?t at a show or a dealer, it was on display at the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn, which was, before it burned down in 1962, one of America?s most popular tourist destinations.
As with Bill Mitchell?s 1959 Stingray concept/racer that would later appear in an Elvis Presley movie, to prolong the publicity value of the Futura it ended up in Hollywood. It?s not entirely clear just how much George Barris was involved in the car?s casting, but the Futura had a featured role in the 1959 movie, It Started With a Kiss, starring Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford. What is known is that the cinematographer didn?t like the Futura?s iridescent blue-white paint, so Barris?s shop was hired to repaint it red.
By the time the movie was filmed, the Futura was a five-year-old show car, so Ford didn?t mind that it sat on the back lot at a movie studio and then later in storage at Barris Kustom City, where the car deteriorated from exposure.
If I?m not mistaken, it was Dean Jeffries who was first approached by the Batman series producers to make a Batmobile, but he was too busy, so they went with Barris. Time was short, Barris already had done some show circuit customs for Ford and he used his connections to buy the Futura for $1 and quickly arranged for its conversion into the Batmobile. Barris submitted some drawings to the studio, whose artists made revisions. He then turned the car over to metalsmith Bob Cushenberry, who cut and shaped the Futura into what we see today.
So we know how the Batmobile started out as the Lincoln Futura, but how did it start out as a fish?
Well, not only were Schmidt and Mitchell in charge of luxury-car styling studios and not only did their cars end up in the movies. The two Bills were good friends and, during a particularly cold Detroit winter in 1952, they vacationed together in the Bahamas, fishing and diving. The tropical sea life caught their attention, how the fish shimmered underwater and how sleek their shapes were. They were both particularly impressed with sharks.
As mentioned, we know that Mitchell made concept cars influenced and even named after sharks. What about Schmidt and the Futura? Well, to be truthful, the Futura is a creature of its times, it appears to be mostly influenced, like many cars of the mid to late 1950s, by jet aircraft, with headlight nacelles, air scoops and fins. Still, on the back deck of the Futura, preserved on the Batmobile, are a series of chevron-shaped vents, to help draw air out of the interior, that look very much like the gills of a shark.
Not only that, but from the materials that survived the fire at the Ford Rotunda, which housed many of the company?s archives, and period press accounts, it appears that Ford hyped the fact that Schmidt got the idea for Futura as a result of a encounter with a shark in the Bahamas in 1952. Of course, the Ford PR folks didn?t mention that Schmidt was hanging out with the head of Cadillac styling at the time.
Bill Schmidt?s shark-inspired Lincoln Futura came out in 1955. Bill Mitchell?s shark-inspired Stingray concept/racer was revealed in 1959. It?s not a fish story to say that they were both inspired by the same sharks.
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