#TBT: Batvan, a Batmobile built for less than $2000 | Articles

Evolution

While the Batvan doesn’t meet the letter of the Challenge rules regarding missing major body panels, none of the participants voiced protests. Instead, they voted it Challengers’ Choice.

Our recent Kumho Tires Grassroots Motorsports $2004 Challenge Presented by CRC Industries attracted a wide range of cars, with 77 teams making the big show. Faced with a budget of no more than $2004, each team made their best attempt at buying, building and preparing a car that would excel in our three-event competition: autocrossing, drag racing and concours judging.

While some cars certainly arrived as prerace favorites, one in particular attracted the most attention the night before the show. You gotta see the bus in the hotel parking lot, people kept saying. Bus? What bus?

While many Challenge competitors armed themselves with turbochargers, nitrous bottles and cheater slicks, Dan and his son, Ian, had a crime-fighting computer, rocket launchers, huge fins and acres of flat-black paint. The centers of their Keystone mag wheels—a donation from Dan’s brother after he couldn’t get $20 for them at his yard sale—even carried red Batman logos, just like the famed George Barris creation.

A Batvan wasn’t Dan’s original plan. “When I decided to do the Challenge, the only plan I had was to use a V8,” he explains. “Hyped Hondas and Jettas may be faster, but they just don’t rumble your guts like a V8.”

In addition to his day job, Dan delivers parts for a local NAPA store on Saturdays. “A fringe benefit is going through the back door of local shops,” he explains. “You see what’s been there too long, what’s a problem child and what’s abandoned. I logged a lot to memory. My original plan was a small car with a V8; maybe an Anglia, Prefect or Metropolitan with an aluminum 215.”

Dan’s V8 thunder came courtesy of a local oval track racer who had built…