When George Barris died at age 89 on November 5, most of the published obituaries referred to him as the designer of the Batmobile for the 1960s television series. But among dyed-in-the-wool car guys from the 1950s and 60s, Barris was much, much more than that.
He was a pioneering car customizer – prior to Barris the term really did not exist – and a man whose work defined an entire genre and influenced car culture, popular culture, and the Detroit automakers themselves.
Barris saw production cars as blank canvases upon which to create his art. Cars were reshaped, parts were removed or relocated, parts from other cars were added, suspensions and rooflines were lowered, and wild paint jobs were applied. The results were anything but subtle. These were the original “art cars.”
The car that put Barris on the map was not the Batmobile of the 1960s but a radically modified a 1951 Mercury Club Coupe that he and his older brother Sam transformed into a streamliner the likes of which had not been seen before. Built in 1953 for owner Bob Hirohata, the car was a nationwide hit, appearing at custom car shows and on magazine covers. The fame and influence of the “Hirohata Merc” resonates to this day.
Barris “Kustoms” – Barris coined the spelling when applied to his custom cars – became well known to a new generation of gearheads not only via magazines such as Hot Rod, Car Craft, and Rod & Custom, but also through plastic model kits sold by companies like Revell, Aurora, and AMT.
“Ala Kart,” a 1929 Ford Model A roadster pickup customized by Barris, won the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award two years in a row, and was one of the most popular plastic model kits. It is very likely that a good number of readers of this article built one of these models as a youth, and many may still have the model today.
When film and television came calling, Barris built the stunt cars for 1958’s “High School Confidential” and the 1949 Mercury that James Dean drove in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Barris transformed a 1921 Oldsmobile into a rustic pickup for the highly successful sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” built a fictional 1928 Porter for the not-at-all-successful sitcom “My Mother the Car,” and created a hearse-influenced hot rod for the moderately successful but well-remembered sitcom “The Munsters.”
But it was Barris’ quickie conversion of the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car into the Batmobile for the 1960s television series “Batman” that is his best-known television creation.
Aside from being a gifted customizer, Barris was also a natural showman with a flair for self-promotion. As a result he landed jobs customizing ostentatious cars for celebrities ranging from Lionel Hampton to Liberace to Elvis Presley Zsa Zsa Gabor – even a golf cart for Bob Hope with a caricature of Hope’s face dominating the design. Barris’ self-promotion sometimes got him into trouble for shading the truth, but as the cliche goes, any publicity is good publicity.
Aside from his appearances in the car-oriented magazines the day, Barris became the subject of a story by writer Tom Wolfe in Esquire in 1963, a story with the improbable title “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)…” The story was later published as the lead essay in Wolfe’s 1965 book titled “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.”
At SEMA in 2013 CarShowSafari.com had an opportunity to spend some time with Barris, and Barris wore one of our Official Car Guy promotional badge stickers while there. There have been other customizers, among them Gene Winfield, Dean Jeffries, and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. But there was only one George Barris. 
Image – George Barris and Car Show Safari team member, Karen, taken at SEMA