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The Batmobile has seen many changes over the years, through countless comic book, TV show and big screen appearances. But it’s not just the looks, power and bad guy-alluding components that change with each car, it is also the price.
While Wayne Enterprises usually supplies Batman with the latest concepts to pilot, as we saw in the movie The Dark Knight, it seems that a huge expense for some of the more modern chapters of the Batman saga is in fact the cars that the Dark Knight picks up and modifies when things are a bit slow on the vehicle-design side of things. As we found out from Autoblog, since 1970 the average Batmobile has actually cost over $300,000.
The 1950s Studebaker-based Batmobile was the least costly of Bruce Wayne's iconic cars at just $13,604 with inflation Image: BatmobileHistory.com
No wonder Batman’s garage keeps getting more and more substantial.
Recently we brought you a video of two iconic Batmobile replicas, one of the 1966 Batmobile and the other of the 1989 Batmobile, battling it out on the new web series Super Power Beat Downs.
While it came as no surprise that the earlier version of the iconic Caped Crusader’s vehicle came in first given its superior power, it becomes even more impressive knowing that the older Batmobiles cost much less than more modern versions.
The contributors at Centives, an economic blog run by the students of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, recently researched the vehicles used by Batman over time to find out just how much the Avenger of the Night would’ve had to pay for his many transporters.
The 2004 comic book Batmobile is the highest priced Batmobile at $1.8 million Image: BatmobileHistory.com
As it turns out, the least expensive of the bunch was the modified Studebaker used between 1950 and 1955 at just $13,604 with inflation. The Centives contributors also figured out that the average cost of a Batmobile between 1940 and 1970 was just an inflated $32,000.
While it may not come as too big of a surprise that the older Batmobiles were relatively cheap, the cost of more modern versions may come as a shock.
After 1970, the average cost of a Batmobile was actually $358,000, with the highest priced version being from 2004 comic books that used a modified Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR costing around $1.8 million.
Over Batman’s 73 years as a superhero, his cars have cost an average of $214,700. Granted, there are some extremes on both end of the spectrum used to get that number, but over $200k per vehicle is still a substantial amount. We guess that’s the price you pay for enacting revenge on all criminals.
Oddly enough, Batman has tended to steer away from American-based Batmobiles in the past few decades, possibly contributing to the excessive cost of each car. Through the early 70s, about 70 percent of Bruce Wayne’s crime-fighting vehicles were American-made, but just 25 percent of Batmobiles since then have been domestic.
Of the foreign cars Batman has used, around half have been from Italian manufacturers. Although Wayne hasn’t used many vehicles from the States as of late, Chrysler has been the most often used American brand, combining with Lamborghini to make up 32 percent of Batman’s purchases since his beginning.
