With the Dark Knight opening soon check out these cool facts about the Batmobile you probably don’t know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director Christopher Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley designed the Batmobile in a garage in Los Angeles. They took inspiration from military vehicles, and built a prototype by sticking together toy cars, eventually combining a Hummer and a Lamborghini.

- There are three different types of customized camouflage ‘Tumbler’, one with a swivelling turret gun, another with a guided missile launcher and a third with a gun.

- The ‘Tumbler’ name comes from its military history due to its ability to jump and tumble.

- The car has no front axle – director Nolan wanted the wheels to be held from the side. This presumably makes the handling rather interesting…

- The Batmobile was built entirely from scratch – it’s not based on any existing car underneath.

- The six wheels used monster truck tyres with varying amounts of tread so that stunt driver George Cottle could decide how much skid power he required at any one time.

- It runs on regular unleaded and weighs two-and-a-half tonnes.

- The ‘Tumbler’ has jumped a distance of 60 feet, can do 0-60mph in five seconds and tops out at 105mph.- The Batpod – Batman’s ‘bike’ – is equipped with three guns on each side: a blast cannon, a grappling gun and a machine gun.

- The tyres on the Batpod are identical to those on the Batmobile.

- It weighs 730 lbs and is a self-righting bike, which means it doesn’t need a foot stand.

- The ‘Bat’ is part helicopter, part jump jet, designed by Nolan and Nathan Crowley and built off a miniature.

- Every single panel of the the ‘Bat’ is bespoke and was sculpted out of lightweight carbon fibre – which means it weighs 3 000 lbs.

- Technically, the ‘Bat’ can’t actually fly – though it will in the film thanks to effects – but it does have working guns and cannons that fire pyrotechnics, and all the lights are radio-controlled to change angle mid-air.

- The ‘Bat’ is attached to a special support vehicle that needs three people to operate it: one to move it up and down, one to move it side to side, and one to drive it.

- Oh, and one last thing – did you know that Murcielago (the Lamborghini model he drove in The Dark Knight) translates as ‘bat’ in Spanish? We didn’t, but now we do.