Photo Credit: Vicari Auctions

The one-of-a-kind 1963 “Batmobile” is going up on the auction block at October’s Vicari Auctions at the Cruisin’ the Coast event in Biloxi, Mississippi. Based on a 1956 Oldsmobile 88 with a 324 Rocket V8 engine, Forrest Robinson began designing and building the car using inspiration from the DC Comics Batmobile of the 1940s and ’50s.

Then 23-year-old Robinson worked with his friend Len Perham to construct the Batmobile in the family farm’s barn in Walpole, New Hampshire. They used chicken wire, burlap bags, molding plaster, and plywood to create the custom fiberglass body, which featured a bat-nosed front end, sliding pocket doors, and a prominent rear dorsal fin.

They completed the two-seater in 1963, three years before the completion of the George Barris–designed Batmobile. Coated in just white primer, it measured more than 6.5 feet wide and 16.5 feet long. Robinson had the idea of a glass-domed roof for the car, but it never happened when the U.S. Army sent him overseas.

The “Batmobile” is believed to be the first car ever used by a DC Comics licensee.

When Robinson returned from his deployment, he rented the car to All Star Dairies and Green Acres Ice Cream as the Batman craze was ramping up. Through late 1966, the car toured eastern U.S. as “Batman’s Batmobile” in the official Batman paint scheme. When Robinson got the car back, he painted it silver and continued driving it until he sold it in 1967 for less than $200. The car was soon left to rust in a field for decades.

In 2008, Bobby Smith of Swanzet, New Hampshire, discovered the Batmobile, and the car changed owners a few times—once to a Chicago car dealership and then to automotive historian George Albright in Florida. The Toy Car Exchange bought the Batmobile in 2013 and had Sacramento’s Mario Borbon of Borbon Fabrications restore the car. The restoration took 11 months, and Borbon managed to keep the original frame, engine, parts, and most of the fiberglass bodywork. Borbon repainted the car black and red and installed whitewall tires.

Forrest Robinson sketched out the two-seater’s design and built the car from scratch. Most of the bodywork, including the sliding pocket doors, was kept intact during its restoration decades later.

After its restoration, the Batmobile won the handbuilt sports class at the 2014 Sacramento Autorama show, and later that year it joined three other Batmobiles at the Pasadena Car Classic Show.

It went up for sale at the Heritage Auctions in Dallas in December 2014 and sold for a disappointing $137,000; it was expected to sell for half a million. Vicari Auctions displayed the Batmobile at its Nocona, Texas, and New Orleans events earlier this year.