This guy does AMAZING stuff... Re-creations of 1950's concept cars. How hard is THAT? His name is Marty Martino, and I've been getting emails from him for over a year, and I've been posting his progress photos on my website. Recently, I got another update, so I decided to just go ahead and devote an entire page to his efforts, compiled from previous posts. It certainly deserves a wider audience. If you thought building a hot rod was hard, try something like THIS! Oh, BTW, yes, I already did a search on the HAMB to see if anyone had posted anything on this, and found nothing. I apologize if this is something that already been posted before. Even if it has, you may not have seen all the photos that I've compiled. Here's the direct link: http://www.huffreport.com/2007/martymartino.htm Here's a hint of the sort of stuff he's working on: Enjoy...
Well, the link provided up above in the original post has MANY photos... Here it is again: http://www.huffreport.com/2007/martymartino.htm Hope that helps! Kevin
Did you scroll beyond just the photos? AFTER the photos, there are probably 2,000 plus words compiled from a year and a half of emails I've gotten from the builder.... Did you stop too soon? It's all there...
my favourite fifties show car by miles.. if I was rich i would pay that guy to finish it and ship it to me..
Thanks, glad you liked it... Actually, having a website has its benefits. Every now and then someone will contact me with something cool for sale. They find me in the search engines... You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that people send me. The Club De Mer photos are sort of along the same lines. Somehow he found my site... Dunno how, he just did. So, I thought it would be of interest to a lot of other people, which is why I posted it both on my site, and here. I think this guy deserves to be recognized. Perhaps someone should be doing a documentary...? I think it would be a LOT more interesting than a lot of the other stuff I see on "reality TV". (Especially some of that BORING stuff they show on Speed TV... How many motorcycle races do we need to see????) Yes, Boyd, Foose, et al, do some neat stuff, but they seem to have big budgets, and a crew to help out. This guy just seems to be doing this pretty much on his own. I love that photo of him sitting in the shop with the "How To Build a Club De Mer" booklet! I think that one photo pretty much sums up what he's doing!
Amazing... thanks for posting this. It's great that someone is willing to do justice to these... for me, especially the Futura. Here's a small one from my archives, rather sad... just before it was turned into, well, you know.
The Lincoln Futura. I have an unhealthy obsession about that car. Mid 50's spaceship on wheels, perfect. Don't have the exact facts, but I'm pretty sure there are molds from the original somewhere.
isn't the original Norseman sitting on the bottom of NYC harbor? the cantalievered top on that car is so unreal. a great study in design. so many subsequent mopar products were heavily influenced by it.
I think the Norseman sank on the Andrea Doria. There is at least one "batmobile" mold, but not sure of a Futura.
Yeah, I think i do too. there was a guy I found on the internet. (Must have been 10 years ago) who was making repro's using real steel 55 fords. They were going for something like 100k. That will be one of the first things I do when I hit the lotto.
The Norseman did indeed go down with the Andrea Doria, a ship that is rapidly turning into a big pile of scrap metal. Judging by what this looks like, it's a safe bet there is very little left of the Norseman. On another note, I've always been a huge Futura geek, I even restored a rare original Revell model of one, all done up in correct colors and with rechromed plastic trim parts - just before they reissued the damn kit. Ah well, it's always been a dream of mine to drive around in a perfect Futura replica. Someday... -KK
Interesting that you should post this photo... If you look CLOSELY in the background, you can see another concept car, although I don't recall the name of it. I'm thinking it was built by Mercury around '56, or so, and was restored some years ago. I believe it was restored by the Guild of Automobile Restorers, or at least I'm thinking they had it in their showroom for a while. Somewhere, I have a photo of it after the restoration. Maybe someone out there can ID the car, as it is quite recognizable.... In the meantime, I'll do some digging and see what I can find. Thanks for the post!
By golly, you get bonus points! After your post, I did a quick search, and there it was! The photo that I was kind of thinking the Guild had on their site. Sure 'nuff... Look under Google Images for "1955 Mercury D-528"... There's a whole slew of 'em, whatever a "slew" is... Thanks for the reply!
Hi all, Well, just last night, I got another update from Marty, so I thought I'd add these to the thread, even though I have NOT yet added them to the webpage noted in my original post... For anyone who did not see the original post go HERE: http://www.huffreport.com/2007/martymartino.htm Here's what Mary wrote: Hi Kevin,Hope you and yours had a great holliday! Wow your latest coverage on the dream cars is great! Today I finished gel coating the body after surfacing and dialing in the shapes in dec.,I also trimmed the fin down an inch and 3/4since the last photos,afterstudying the photos of the original. It's really taking shape now, Ill do a major update in Feb., should have bumpers, dash, taillights etc.plus the mech. rebuild of the '59 drive train should be well underway. Then comes lots of block sanding to get the shapes slick and a ton of other finishing and mech work! take care ,Marty
Here is what I know about the Futura. The original was built by Ghia for Ford at the price of $250,000. Original car was made of steel so there are not any "original" molds. Went on the show circuit and retired until Barris bought it for a dollar. Shortly after TV people call Barris and request a Batmobile, Barris accepts and looks at the Futura. Gearge and his crew made some minor changes, (look at both cars and you will see) painted it black, and added some fake "bat" stuff in three weeks for $30,000. No more Futura. Demand for Batmobile appearances is higher than Lindsay Lohan court appearances so George pulls molds from the original Batmobile and builds three more fiberglass cars for show duty, only the original car was ever on tv. Since then there at least two different companys reproducng the batmobile body one of which was Bob Butts. Bob was they only one allowed to pull molds off of one of the Barris fiberglass batmobiles and then modified the molds to make his Futura clone. As far as I know only one of these Futuras ever was assembled and I believe that Bob Butts did it himself. The reason for all the Futura knowledge? I have that car in the shop right now. I have tried to learn as much about it as I can. Much more information @ 1966batmobile.com I will try to get som pics tomorrow if anyone is interested and I apologize if I bored anyone with this mostly useless information.
I don't know how much reference material he has, but I have some for each of those cars... I can scan them for him to see if it's a duplicate. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=217347 Mike
Great website you have there! I noticed your page called "My Brush With the Batmobile", which reminded me of an old photo I had taken sometime back in the '70s. This one was covered with "Bat Fuzz", and was already in pretty poor condition when this photo was taken... Just curious about what become of this particular car. (?) I'll go back and look on your website, as I suspect the answer is on one of your pages... Thanks for sharing!... Here's that poor Batmobile:
Just to be clear, the Batmobile website is not mine I just happened upon it while doing Futura research. I meant to get pictures of the Futura we have in the shop but it was a busy day. Are there plans for any of these bodies that Mr. Martino is building? Was he commisioned to do these by someone? The Futura in your picture looks as if it is without out running gear or even a frame.
I just rec'd an interesting email from someone who had found my website looking for info on the Club De Mer... Here is a very interesting link, showing full page scans taken from Mechanix Illustrated, sometime around 1956, showing how the Club De Mer was constructed: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007...Qif=dream_up_car_1.jpg&Qiv=thumbs&Qis=XL#qdig Just thought some of you might find this interesting...
Hey does anybody have CDM photos of the headlights and finished trunk area after it was done? I'm building the Revell reissue kit and thought it would look cool to super detail it Cheers
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