Where's Frank Miller's tank-mobile as seen in "The Dark Knight Returns" in '86? The one he "modified after some nasty riots"?? No doubt Nolan was inspired in part by it when he designed the Tumbler.

As much as I love the original 1960's Batmobile (for the fun of it) in truth, the only one I'd want to own or drive is from 2005 Dark Knight.

I'd also wear pants and boots in a fight - and not a bathing suit & heels, but that's me. I don't have to over-compensate for how small I think my penis is. :-)

Uh, where’s Dark Knight Returns?

http://www.batmobilehistory.com/miller-batmobile.php

I love this.

In my youth as a bat-reader (a scant two-ish decades ago!), I never did much like the Batmobiles. It seemed like every artist had a radical new take that wasn't much of an improvement over the previous one. I later found out about earlier designs and decided that the classic Studebaker Batmobile is probably about as classy as it gets for the Batman.

For the record, the earliest design I remember seeing is the one labeled "1992 comic books." You don't really see it in the image provided, but it appears to be modeled after a Maserati Boomerang or similar sports car.

As far as screen adaptations go, you can't beat the original design from the 1990s animated series.

My fave is the really stylized one from the 90s cartoon. That was the best version of the character/universe, IMO, and the best-designed. Roger I doubt you've ever seen it (and indeed w/o knowing more about it you might consider it not worth your time), but I'd recommend you watch at least a couple episodes of that cartoon sometime. It was wonderfully drawn and written. You and Gene favorably reviewed the Mask of the Phantasm film which had the same animation and writers.

The opening gives a pretty good feel for the show itself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEx9r5enZsk

Very impressive history. I've even seen the two from the Forties movie serials. In the first one, Batman's car was a convertible! Someone has mentioned the animated Batman TV series from the Nineties. To see a great story from that era, check out ]THE BATMAN/SUPERMAN MOVIE. Taken from the three-part episode "World's Finest" (the title of the monthly comic that used to team up the two heroes) of "The New Batman/Superman Adventures", TB/SM has Batman following Joker to Metropolis where he is looking to get a billion dollars from Lex Luthor for killing Superman with a big kryptonite dragon statue. Harry Knowles of "Ain't It Cool News" mentioned this once on your old show. I think you'd rather enjoy it, Roger.