Tail fins (cars)

[Fading Fast]

In the Batman "shorts" that TCM has been running recently, Batman gets around in a normal car - it seems really odd to see him and Robin race to the scene in a standard American '40s automobile and, then, jump out to fight crime.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always used to wonder about the Batmobile -- what does Batman do about inspection and registration? Does he sit in line at the DMV waiting to be called? Does he sip the complimentary coffee and read the paper at the garage while some guy in greasy overalls checks his tie rods?

 

[Fading Fast]

I always used to wonder about the Batmobile -- what does Batman do about inspection and registration? Does he sit in line at the DMV waiting to be called? Does he sip the complimentary coffee and read the paper at the garage while some guy in greasy overalls checks his tie rods?

We all know how it works. What, with Batman's ties to Commissioner Gordon, he probably gets a free, up-to-date inspection sticker sent to him in the mail, no actual inspection needed. I guess it would be mailed to Batman, c/o of The Bat Cave, location unknown - thinking that through, Batman might need to take a P.O. Box.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Quick, Robin, to the Bat-maildrop.

 

[Fading Fast]

Quick, Robin, to the Bat-maildrop.

Nothing glamorous about anyone's day to day, even superheroes.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I always used to wonder about the Batmobile -- what does Batman do about inspection and registration? Does he sit in line at the DMV waiting to be called? Does he sip the complimentary coffee and read the paper at the garage while some guy in greasy overalls checks his tie rods?

That's like wondering if Superman ever gets the flu. If kryptonite is the only thing that can kill him, does he not have to worry about getting food poisoning? Can he eat anything, no matter how rancid?

 

[HudsonHawk]

I always used to wonder about the Batmobile -- what does Batman do about inspection and registration? Does he sit in line at the DMV waiting to be called? Does he sip the complimentary coffee and read the paper at the garage while some guy in greasy overalls checks his tie rods?

Apparently Batman and Robin do their own Batmobile maintenance. Right after they get out the Bat bed....and shower together.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That *cold* shower is very important.

 

[plain old dave]

Inspections and DMVs are something I haven't had to fool with in decades.

Here in Tennessee, we have no State vehicle inspection. Lamar Alexander did away with them as almost his first act as Governor in 1978.

No DMV either. License plates are processed by the County Court Clerk's office and driver's licenses are done by the TN Department of Safety and Homeland Security. The only time there's ever a line at either is the last week of the month and the first week of the month. I renewed my tag Thursday and was literally the only customer in sight at the County Court Clerk's office in the Courthouse over in Clinton. Had a pleasant chat with the lady, too.

To get back to the topic, though, American cars IMO didn't really develop any real sort of distinctive styling until the mid-1950s. Lizzie, I get you like your Plodge. But to tell the difference between, say, a '38 Plymouth and a '38 Chevrolet I have to read the insignia. Pre-50s cars to me all look like a big upside down bathtub with a little upside down bathtub on top of it.

I don't have that problem with 50s cars or 60s cars. A '57 Chrysler looks nothing like a '57 Ford, and a decade later a '70 Road Runner is nothing like a '70 LS6 Chevelle.

But we kind of went back to the future in the 80s. 80s cars have very little distinctive styling; where the 30s cars look like bathtubs, 80s cars are a big box with a little one on top. And 90s cars all look like gumdrops.

 

[Zombie_61]

That's an impressive array of Batmobiles, but isn't there one missing?

Actually, there are three missing if you exclude all of the versions seen in the comic books, animated series', and video games.

For the 1943 Columbia serial The Batman, they used a 1939 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 convertible sedan:

For the 1949 Columbia serial Batman and Robin, they used a 1949 Mercury convertible:

In both serials, if the top was down the car was Bruce Wayne's daily driver; if the top was up, it was the Batmobile (though I don't think they ever called it that in either serial).

And the 2016 movie Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice featured another stylized Batmobile, built specifically for the production:

Still think the original '60s TV series had the best Batmobile, despite almost everything else being cheesy wrong in the show. All these others looks off, forced, generic whereas the '60s ones has style and personality. But of course, this is all opinion.

I like all of them except for the Clooneymobile from Batman & Robin (1997), so it's difficult for me to choose an absolute favorite.

The '66 Barrismobile did have one clear advantage over all of the others--it had a trunk where Batman could carry supplies, crimefighting equipment, evidence, or whatever else. But the original car had some serious performance issues. For anyone who doesn't know, it was originally a 1955 concept car called the Lincoln Futura built by Ford Motor Company. Built entirely by hand in Turin, Italy, it cost Ford $250,000. Barris bought it from Ford in 1965 for $1. When the producers of the upcoming Batman television show contacted Barris, he had only three weeks to design and build a Batmobile for them, and he chose the Futura as the base car. The "Batfins" and other body modifications were all fabricated from sheet steel which added extra weight to the car, but the time and budgetary constraints didn't allow for improving the suspension, brakes, or engine to deal with the added weight, so Barris' Batmobile was indeed a "lead sled"; once they got it moving, they never knew if it would turn or brake when they wanted it to.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Inspections and DMVs are something I haven't had to fool with in decades.

Here in Tennessee, we have no State vehicle inspection. Lamar Alexander did away with them as almost his first act as Governor in 1978.

There's been talk of doing that here, but nobody takes it seriously. The fact is, in a snow-and-salt state not having inspections is a genuine hazard to public safety. The salt eats the underside of the cars to the point where the struts are completely devoured within twenty years or so, and our tendency here to drive cars until there's nothing left of them means that without an inspection program to get the most dangerous cars off the road there'd be cars literally falling apart in the middle of traffic.

To get back to the topic, though, American cars IMO didn't really develop any real sort of distinctive styling until the mid-1950s. Lizzie, I get you like your Plodge. But to tell the difference between, say, a '38 Plymouth and a '38 Chevrolet I have to read the insignia. Pre-50s cars to me all look like a big upside down bathtub with a little upside down bathtub on top of it.

I dunno, I've never had any trouble telling a Terraplane from a Packard. Or a Nash from a DeSoto. Or a Pontiac from a Ford. It's just a matter of knowing what to look for. Conversely, fifties and sixties cars all look very much alike to me other than such obvious stickouts as Volkswagens and Nash Metropolitans. I can recognize "families," and can usually tell a GM car from a Chrysler-family, and can recognize the ones that popular cultura has embraced, like '57 Chevies and '59 Cadillacs, but in general Boomer-era cars all look clumsy, awkward, and way oversized to me. The "styling" is there, but it's always come across to me like they were trying way too hard to be HEY LOOK AT ME. I find the styling of prewar cars to be much more subtle and dignified.

 

[Fading Fast]

There's been talk of doing that here, but nobody takes it seriously. The fact is, in a snow-and-salt state not having inspections is a genuine hazard to public safety. The salt eats the underside of the cars to the point where the struts are completely devoured within twenty years or so, and our tendency here to drive cars until there's nothing left of them means that without an inspection program to get the most dangerous cars off the road there'd be cars literally falling apart in the middle of traffic....

Kinda asking both you and plain old dave, if there are no inspections, what governs the safety of cars as I've only lived in states where you had to get your car inspected annually? What prevents an irresponsible person from driving a car with nearly failing brakes, etc?

I know that even in states with inspections, people can drive dangerous cars until they are caught, but the annual inspection does catch some bad actors and forces some marginal people to "shape up" for or after the inspection. Are there any studies that show if states without inspections have more incidents / accidents / etc. related to vehicle safety?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't have any statistics -- all I have is what I see around me, and my own experience with cars. When my '69 VW failed its last inspection I had no choice but to get rid of it. When they loaded it onto the trailer to haul it away, the entire front end pulled off because it was so badly rusted out. Imagine hitting a Maine pothole in that car.

Likewise, I wasn't happy last fall when I had to junk my '97 Toyota, but the rear end was at a point where, when they tried to replace a bad fuel line, the metal crumbled to powder at their touch. Just about everyone I know drives a car until it won't pass another inspection.

We have a lot of people who try to duck the inspection laws by registering 25-year-old beater pickup trucks as "Antique Autos," while using them to haul lobster traps, and that's a loophole we expect to see closed pretty soon. Already they've changed the "antique auto" registration laws to require you to own at least one "primary use" car with a standard registration in order to register any other vehicle as an antique, and eventually they're going to either require some kind of inspection for "antiques" or they'll change the age point where a vehicle qualifies as an "antique" to get rid of all these rusted out 1990 F-150s clattering around.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I don't have any statistics -- all I have is what I see around me, and my own experience with cars. When my '69 VW failed its last inspection I had no choice but to get rid of it. When they loaded it onto the trailer to haul it away, the entire front end pulled off because it was so badly rusted out. Imagine hitting a Maine pothole in that car.

Likewise, I wasn't happy last fall when I had to junk my '97 Toyota, but the rear end was at a point where, when they tried to replace a bad fuel line, the metal crumbled to powder at their touch. Just about everyone I know drives a car until it won't pass another inspection.

We have a lot of people who try to duck the inspection laws by registering 25-year-old beater pickup trucks as "Antique Autos," while using them to haul lobster traps, and that's a loophole we expect to see closed pretty soon. Already they've changed the "antique auto" registration laws to require you to own at least one "primary use" car with a standard registration in order to register any other vehicle as an antique, and eventually they're going to either require some kind of inspection for "antiques" or they'll change the age point where a vehicle qualifies as an "antique" to get rid of all these rusted out 1990 F-150s clattering around.

Salt corrosion seems the obvious common denominator. Do car washes do a land office business in your locale?

 

[LizzieMaine]

We have two "drive in car wash" places in a town of less than 7000 people, so somebody's using them. It's not just the road salt, either -- when you live less than 100 yards from the Atlantic Ocean, salt air is a very real issue as well.

 

[GHT]

I find the styling of prewar cars to be much more subtle and dignified.

Me too, and in the aesthetic stakes, pre-war American cars could more than hold their own with European styling:

 

[plain old dave]

Kinda asking both you and plain old dave, if there are no inspections, what governs the safety of cars as I've only lived in states where you had to get your car inspected annually? What prevents an irresponsible person from driving a car with nearly failing brakes, etc?

I know that even in states with inspections, people can drive dangerous cars until they are caught, but the annual inspection does catch some bad actors and forces some marginal people to "shape up" for or after the inspection. Are there any studies that show if states without inspections have more incidents / accidents / etc. related to vehicle safety?

Without getting off into politics, the Governor before Alexander was pretty corrupt. The law only allowed one place per county to do inspections, and all 96 of them were Democrat Party donors or office holders when Alexander repealed the law; the inspection was widely seen as an income enhancer for Democrat politicians, and had become political patronage.

At least here, the scare tactics about "unsafe" cars are just fear mongering. I have never seen a genuinely unsafe car on the road here in Tennessee.

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our system is quite different. Any garage employing or run by a mechanic with state certification can qualify to do inspections, and most towns have several, to the point where people will often shop around for a garage where the inspector might be a bit less strict than the last one they visited. But the other side of that is that both the garage and the individual mechanic are personally liable if a car bearing a sticker they signed is found to be the cause of an accident due to the vehicle being unsafe, so fear of such liability tends to prevent mechanics from just handing out stickers at random.

 

[GHT]

Our system is quite different. Any garage employing or run by a mechanic with state certification can qualify to do inspections, and most towns have several, to the point where people will often shop around for a garage where the inspector might be a bit less strict than the last one they visited. .

The UK is much the same. All cars, when they become three years old must pass a series of mechanical, body and glass tests. The glass is, if you have a 'bullseye' chip that is obscuring vision, it will fail. The test, set by a government department, known as the Ministry of Transport is known more commonly by it's acronym, the MOT. Any garage can apply to become a test centre, but they will be put through a stringent examination by the Ministry of Transport, before approval.
One anomaly to the above rule, a strange one too, once a car reaches 40 years old it's deemed to be a classic and becomes exempt of the annual test.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Over 25 is exempt here, and there's a strong move to change that. A few years ago, a man was killed by a 1930s fire engine that lost its brakes on a hill during a parade and crushed him.