No not the host of the Gong Show
George Barris, the creator of the amazing 1966 Batmobile and many other legendary whips ... has died.
Barris' most famous car was surely the one Adam West drove during the "Batman" TV show. But he has a rich automotive history ... he designed the 'Munsters' Koach, the truck for "The Beverly Hillbillies" and the modified Dodge Charger for "Thunder Alley."
The Batmobile sold at auction in 2013 for $4.62 million.
Barris died early Thursday. We're told he'd been battling a brain tumor. He was just shy of 90.
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When I was younger I had a book of the cars he had designed, including the Munster car, the "bubble car" and many others.
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http://www.barris.com/cars.php
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Got to spend a few hours talking with George Barris in his shop back in the 90's. One of the guys I was doing some electronics work for was real tight with him, so he set the whole thing up. It was really cool, but also kind of odd, his shop was more like an abandoned mausoleum than a museum. George was really nice, a bit kooky, and had some great stories about his cars, how he built some of the early ones before things we take for granted, like Bondo, existed, and kicking himself for the cars he sold along the way. Somewhere I have some photos of me in the Batmobile and all of us standing in front of the Monkeemobile, which, in and of itself made little sense, because he didn't build that car, he bought it from Jeffries - maybe he was hoping we would all hide it from the photo.
RIP ya kooky king of customs.
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