George Barris, the pioneer car designer known for being the creator of the original Batmobile for the Batman TV series, has died at age 89.
"Sorry to have to post that my father, legendary Kustom car king George Barris, has moved to the bigger garage in the sky," his son Brett Barris wrote in a Facebook post. "He passed on peacefully in his sleep at 2:45 a.m. He was surrounded by his family in the comfort of his home. He lived his life they way he wanted til the end. He would want everyone to celebrate the passion he had for life and for what he created for all to enjoy."
The king of customized cars was famously known in Hollywood, responsible for creating cars for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, The Time Machine and High School Confidential, as well as for working on Elvis Presley's 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood, Zsa Zsa Gabor's Rolls-Royce and designing cars for Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson.
Barris' interest in building cars started at an early age. Born in Chicago on Nov. 20, 1925, to Greek immigrants, he started customizing with his brother at age 13, when the two restored a 1925 Buick. From there, Barris began working on his own projects, such as a 1936 Ford that featured a convertible as its base, while working his way up throughout his teens at his job at a local auto body shop.
He then moved to L.A., where he would show off his swanky cars that would frequently be seen parked at drive-ins.
"I had just come from Sacramento, and I wasn't supposed to know anything," Barris told author Tom Wolfe of the book "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" about the culture of customized cars. "I was a tourist but my car was wilder than anything around. I remember one night this kid comes up with a roadster with no handles. It looked real sharp, but he had to kick the door from the inside to open it. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw mine — I had the same thing, only with electric buttons."
He would then go on to open his own shop, Barris Kustom Industries, with his brother Sam, and when his customized Buick was featured in L.A.'s first custom car show, he began to gain the attention of Hollywood.
The rest is history.
Barris was asked by ABC to design a vehicle for the '60s Batman series, transforming a 1955 Ford Lincoln Futura concept car into the Batmobile, which featured red pinstripes and a Plexiglas "bulletproof" windshield, in 15 days with $15,000.
Along with creating four other Batmobiles to be used for stunts and promotional use, he also built a coffin car (which featured a red velvet interior) called "the Munster Koach" for The Munsters TV series, pimped out James Dean's Porsche Spyder and designed a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado, complete with a grand piano hood that played "I'll Be Seeing You," for Liberace.
Barris' Batmobile sold for $4.63 million at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona in 2013.
Edward Lozzi, a family spokesman, confirmed the man who made car customization an art form died from cancer on Thursday, Nov. 5, at his home in Encino. His two children, daughter Jodi and son Brett, survive him.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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