George Barris: Pioneer who made the Batmobile and other cool cars
1925-2015
GEORGE Barris, one of the pioneer car customisers immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s famous essay The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, and the designer of the Batmobile, the Munster Koach and other speciality cars for TV and film, died on Thursday at his home in Encino, California. He was 89.
Barris, a veteran of the body shops of Sacramento and Los Angeles, was a towering figure in the southern California subculture of customisers and hot-rodders, known for the sophistication of his design work and his flair for selfpromotion.
He and his elder brother, Sam, treated standard-issue Mercurys, Buicks and Fords as mere starting points for reinterpretation. They stripped away trim, reshaped body parts and pirated grilles, headlights and tail-lights from other car models.
George created his own line of outré paints, called Kandy Colors, to impart lustre and depth to vehicles that became, in effect, rolling works of street art.
In his baroque phase, Barris designed a slew of special-order cars for TV, most famously transforming a 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car, in three weeks, into the finned Batmobile for the ’60s series Batman.
In an entirely different vein, he spliced together a 1921 Oldsmobile and a flat-bed pick-up for the sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, and incorporated a coffin in creating the family car on The Munsters, calling it a Drag-u-La.
“He made a look — the southern California customised car look — that was very distinctive,” said John DeWitt, the author of Cool Cars, High Art: The Rise of Kustom Kulture.
“But his great contribution was putting customising on the map. He was a phenomenal publicist and showman. LA was the perfect place for him.”
George Salapatas was born on November 20 1925 in Chicago. His mother died when he was three, and his father sent his two sons to be raised by relatives in Roseville, California, a Sacramento suburb.
The Barris name was fashioned from Salapatas and another family name, Badacardes.
The brothers’ creations reached a national audience through car shows, new magazines such as Hot Rod, Car Craft, and Rod and Custom, and model kits. One car in particular sealed the brothers’ reputation: the Hirohata Merc, a 1951 Mercury Club Coupe that Sam and George transformed into a sleek, elongated teardrop.
Barris created a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado for Liberace with sterling silver grand-piano bonnet ornaments that played I’ll Be Seeing You when it opened.
His celebrity projects also included Elvis Presley’s 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood (with a gold-plated record player, drinks cabinet and shoe buffer inside), a gold Rolls-Royce for Zsa Zsa Gabor and a caricature golf cart, with ski-jump nose, for Bob Hope.
“Look, I’m just a crazy car guy, and I’m proud of it,” Barris said. “My love for this nutty stuff keeps me coming to the office every day, eight o’clock sharp.”
Barris married Shirley Ann Nahas, who helped manage his business until she died in 2001. He leaves a son, Brett, a daughter, Joji Barris-Paster, and a grandson. — NYTimes.com
He was a phenomenal showman. LA was the perfect place for him