Popular for their affordability and mid-mounted engines, Toyota MR2s have been the subject of every style of modification imaginable, ranging from performance-enhancing to purely aesthetic. How well these mods are executed also varies wildly, with coming out lust-worthy while others beg to be torched. Somewhere in between these two is the budget Batmobile you see here, which toes the thin line between awesome and atrocious.
Inspired by the jet-powered hero car from the Dark Knight’s 1989 silver-screen outing, this Batmobile is the combination of a second-generation MR2, a set of scissor doors, and what looks like the contents of an HVAC contractor’s dumpster. It wouldn’t look out of place at the 24 Hours of Lemons or its associated rallies, and for good reason; this Batmobile was built to be driven in a “banger rally,” which is what the Brits call a road rally for cars costing £500 or less.
Like most things European, banger rallies seem to predate our Yank equivalent, though, in spirit, they boil down to the same thing. Take a cheap car, try to drive it several hundred or thousands of miles, hopefully write-off the trip as a business expense, and then raise some money for a charity along the way. The builders of this MR2 won’t get to enter this car in such a rally until late September when the 2020 Koper or Bust sets off toward Slovenia, though they haven’t waited to start raising money.
During a brief tour of British cities this past Sunday, the owner of this car raised the small, but tidy sum of £509 for a pair of healthcare charities. It may not be much, but more than most people contributed to the world with their Sundays, and it made a few people smile along the way to boot. And last time we checked, that’s kind of the point.
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