Before it was famous: the first appearance of Adam West's 1966 Batmobile

This is a clip from the 1956 movie 'It Started With a Kiss' which features the first on screen apperance of the 1955 Lincoln Futura that would 10 years later be customised by George Barris to become Adam West's Batmobile.


This is what the cats over at the always excellent Bat-Blog  have to say on the origin of a  screen icon....

The original one-off 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car was originally created by Ford Motor Company and a design team at the Lincoln Styling Department. The 19-foot long, two-seat, bubble-topped grand touring car prototype was entirely hand-built in 1954 by Ghia Body Works in Turin, Italy, and unveiled in its original pearlescent Frost-Blue white paint finish in 1955 at the Chicago Auto show......

Barris then acquired the vehicle and kept it in his garage for several years. In late 1965, 20th Century Fox Television and William Dozier's Greenway Productions contacted Barris and asked him to produce a Batmobile for the upcoming TV series. With only 15 days and $15,000 budget to build a Batmobile, Barris decided to transform the Lincoln Futura concept car into what is now widely recognized as the original and iconic crime-fighting vehicle.''

It's also a nice coincidence that it's sporting a red paint job similar to the first comic book Batmobile (Detective Comics #27, 1939)