To celebrate the 85th anniversary of the Batman franchise, Warner Bros. is making 10 drivable replicas of the Caped Crusader’s iconic Tumbler armored vehicle available for a cool US$3 million apiece.
If you’ve got that kind of scratch lying around, it’s certainly worth adding to your movie memorabilia collection – but I wanted to make sure you had all the facts before you dove in.
Here are five things to know about this incredible, fully functional crime-fighting machine before you go buy one.
1) These are being built to order
According to Hypebeast, California-based custom garage Action Vehicle Engineering has been officially sanctioned by Warner Bros. to craft 10 of these machines from scratch. That means they’re not from the set of fully functional Tumblers used in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy films.
In 2013, Dave Ragan, a transportation studio driver with Warner Bros. told Jay Leno that seven Tumblers were built for the movies, including a few stunt-ready versions and a stationary one with no engine.
If you’re lucky enough to get your name on the list, you’ll be in for a 15-month wait before your own limited-edition Tumbler is ready for you. That’s actually longer than the year it took to build the first prototype for the movies.
2) You’re paying a lot more than the cost of the original cars
HowStuffWorks noted in 2006 (a year after the release of Batman Begins, the first film in Nolan’s trilogy) that four Batmobiles were made for use in the movies, and they cost $250,000 each to build.
Adjusted for inflation, that works out to just under $400,000 today. So yeah, the cost of one replica could’ve netted you seven stunt Tumblers, and left you with plenty of change to buy a real car.
3) They’re not street legal
That’s right. As much you’ll probably want to barrel through town intimidating bad guys and saving your city, Hypebeast notes these replicas are not cleared for road use. You’ll have to be content parking one in your Batcave instead.
4) They won’t come with fire-breathing jet engines
The Tumblers used in the movies were fitted with hot air balloon burners and propane tanks that allowed the ‘jet engine’ at the rear to spew flames for exciting shots. Sadly, these replicas will only get a ‘Jet engine simulation – no flames.’ It isn’t clear exactly what that’ll look like, but it’s not going to be nearly as thrilling to rev up.
5) They’ll get engines similar to those in the Batmobile
A 500, HP 5.7 liter GM V8 engine was good enough for The Dark Knight – so you should be fine with the replica’s 6.2L LS3 engine, that’ll dish out 525 HP and 486 lb.ft (658.9 Nm) of torque. The Tumbler’s will also be built to similar sizes as the movie versions: they’ll be 15 ft 3 in long, 9 ft 3 in wide, and 5 ft tall (4.65 x 2.8 x 1.5 m)
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With a tubular aeronautical steel frame, and a body made from Kevlar, carbon fiber, and sheet metal fiberglass, each of them will also weigh about the same as the originals at about 5,500 lb (2,494.75 kg).
If that sounds like your next bit of midlife crisis retail therapy, hurry up and head over to the Wayne Enterprises-branded site. Orders are said to have closed by the end of October, but the form is still up, which means you might still have a shot.
Source: Wayne Enterprises
