Polar Lights 1/25 Batmobile Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Back in 1955, Ford Motor Company's Lincoln division designed a concept car called the Lincoln Futura. The car was hand-built in Turin, Italy for $250,000 (big money in 1955!) and made the car show circuit before the car was put out to pasture and the concept was never put into production. Nearly 10 years later, the famous custom car designer George Barris acquired the car from Ford for a stunning $1.

Not long after its acquisition, the producers for a new TV show called 'Batman' approached Barris for a Batmobile to be used in their filming. The good news was that this was follow-on business after the Munstermobile and would lead to a few other interesting on-screen vehicles, but the bad news was that this car had to be on set in three weeks. Barris saw potential in his recent Futura acquisition and the Batmobile would become a television icon when the series debuted in 1966.

Polar Lights (Round 2) has released their Batmobile in 1/25th scale as a snap kit. Snap kits usually have several key attributes: 1) They usually go together with no glue; 2) They are usually pre-finished on the exterior; and 3) While these kits are ideal for young modelers, they are also just the thing for frustrated modelers who come home from work after a long day and don't have much time/energy to get into a more intricate project.

This new kit from Polar Lights meets all three snap kit attributes and even comes with a set of pre-finished seated figures in the form of the 1966 Batman and Robin. The kit is molded in black styrene and presented on four parts trees and the chassis. The kit also contains a single chromed tree and two clear parts trees. In addition, the kit has a pre-finished body, pre-finished front and rear roll pans and a complete set of chrome-plated custom hub caps with the red bat logos printed nicely on them.

The Barris Batmobile had many clear coats applied over the gloss black finish before receiving the distinctive red stripes and accents. Polar Lights provides a nicely finished body that requires no more work but the AMS modeler might want to apply a few more clear coats and polish that finish.

The instructions clearly walk you through the detail painting that goes into the interior and on the front and rear ends of the car, including those famous 'bat-turn' parachute packs. The kit also provides a small sheet of decals which provide license plates (Gotham, of course), instrument faces for the dashboard, and even safety labels for the fire extinguisher.

For a snap kit, this is a simple yet nicely detailed model that should look awesome on the shelf. If the snap kit looks this nice, I can hardly wait to see the full-kit version of this Batmobile coming in the near future. This looks like a fun project for a rainy weekend and will look nice in your display case.

My sincere thanks to Round 2 Models for this review sample!