A friend of mine called me one night and asked me if I wanted to buy his car, a 1975 Dodge Dart. He had hit a curb the night before and was leaving the state in a couple days. He only wanted $100 and it was still drivable. I had been kicking around the idea of building a plywood Batmobile; this looked like the perfect opportunity. I hacked off the roof and sculpted pieces of plywood onto the car. I knew the plywood edges would be especially vulnerable to weather, so I cut up an old bedsheet into strips slathered on with Elmer’s wood glue to fill the gaps and protect these edges. I made the windshields out of 1/16th inch polycarbonate, flexed into an arc and Zip Tied onto the dash. I painted the car with black oil based house paint. For pinstripes I used red electrical tape. I believe the entire project took about 10 days and cost about $500, including the car and materials.
After a year or so I decided to make a jet engine that was mounted on the trunk. The fake jet engine had a radiator fan inside that blew air over 100 iridescent plastic strips. This was illuminated by a diffracted car headlight within the jet engine. Although I was shooting for comical and cheesy, it looked pretty convincing at night. I was pulled over for the rear facing headlight, and I also wanted an engine on the nose, so I repurposed the engine onto the front grille.
I drove the car quite a bit from 87 to the early 90’s, even in the winter. It was my daily driver to college classes in Anchorage and it found its way into a few parades. My parents lived on Wasilla Lake where I found that the fins were pretty effective; the car could not be spun out on ice at 35 MPH or faster, even while trying to whip it into a slalom spin out. The windscreen, however, had a speed limit of 70 MPH. The windscreens would simply collapse, but would pop back up if I slowed down to 60 or so.
I had a fireworks business in Houston Alaska, where it would be parked as a highway roadside attraction. Dozens or even hundreds of people would stop and take photos of it on summer days.
In 1987 while in college in Alaska I built a budget Batmobile.
