Hollywood's Greatest Movie and TV Cars

Thanks to Hollywood car customizers like George Barris, Dean Jeffries, Anton Furst, and Les Dunham as well as top-end luxury manufacturers like Aston Martin, cars have succeeded in becoming real characters that rival their human co-stars in many movies and television series from the James Bond films to "Bullitt" to "Ghostbusters" to "Batman" to "The Monkees."

The Batmobile

In 1971, the Batmobile made its first appearance on television's "Batman" series. The superhero car wasn't built from scratch. It was actually a customized Lincoln Futura, a 1958 concept car made by Ford. In the early sixties, premier Hollywood car designer George Barris bought the Futura and kept it at his garage until the "Batman" producers came calling and asked him to design a Batmobile.

While Barris's Batmobile looked sleek and futuristic, it often broke down on the set mainly because the original Futura's age. It was over ten years old at the time. During shooting of the TV series, the Batmobile overheated; its batteries went dead, and its Indy 500 style tires kept blowing out.

While the movie versions of the Batmobile, particularly those not replicated in CGI, are much more spectacular than the original TV Batmobile, the seventies vehicle is still the one remembered the most.

And, of the movie versions, it's the Anton Furst-designed vehicle for the first Tim Burton-directed movie that's the one best remembered. The Furst Batmobile was a fiberglass body mounted on a modified GM chassis. Furst won an Oscar for his design.

The Monkeemobile

Dean Jeffries is Hollywood's other legendary car customizer, even though many of his creations, including the Monkeemobile and Ghostbusters' ECT-One, have often been credited to the much higher profile George Barris.

The Monkeemobile, built for "The Monkees" television series, was actually a modified Pontiac GTO with a tall split windshield, a third row of car seats, and even an emergency parachute.

As for the ECT-ONE (AKA "the Ectmobile"), Dean Jeffries customized a 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor for the 1984 film "Ghostbusters."