What were you doing when you were 23 years old? Clubbing. Going after girls? I bet it was anything but building a The Dark Knight’s Batmobile aka Tumbler. And building a Batmobile “Tumbler” is exactly what a 23 year-old student, Nguyen Dac Chung, from Vietnam’s Hanoi University of Architecture did.
While Chung’s Batmobile is not to scale to the movie’s, it does look the part and impressive nonetheless. Speaking of scale, Chung’s Tumbler measures 3.6 m long, 2.6 m wide and 1.5 m tall (11.8 x 8.5 x 4.9 feet) which, if I am not mistaken, is about 90 percent the size of the movie’s Tumbler.
Chung started with a 3D replica and it took a team of 10 months to get to what you see here today. Chung’s Tumbler is totally functional, capable of a not-suitable-for-escaping-from-villains top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph).
That said, it is not powered by a big block engine like in the movie. Instead, it has a modest 400 cc 4-cylinder engine and it has a motorcycle exhaust pipe inside the “jet engine” “afterburner”. Dac spent 500 million Vietnamese dong (roughly US$21,600) out of his pocket to make this replica.
He managed to secure the frame and parts required for the body from within Vietnam, but components like the tires and wheels were imported from other countries.
Although the exterior and powertrain are largely done, This designed-and-made-in-Vietnam Batmobile is very much still work in progress. There is much to do on the interior (which seats two comfortably, btw), lightning et cetera.
I am most certainly impressed. Because, at 23, I was most certainly doing what I mentioned in the beginning. What have I been doing with my life???
Images: Facebook (@macro.studios).
Source: VnExpress.net.