A Batmobile Tumbler Spec Series, and 4 Other Excellent Ideas

Spec racing is some of the most fun you can have on a race track. Whether you’re turning laps in surplus Ford Crown Victoria Police Packs, or banging around in somebody else’s Rad-era supercar, putting everyone behind the wheel of near-identical machinery is the ultimate way to level the playing field and make each event a true test of driver skill. The opportunity to assemble perhaps the most awesome spec racing series of all time made itself plain this past month when Warner Brothers announced plans to build a fleet of 10 replicas of the “Tumbler” Batmobile made famous by Christopher Nolan’s cinematic Dark Knight trilogy.

That’s right: not only could you put yourself in the driver’s seat of one of the most bad-ass movie cars (tanks?) of all time, but with enough scratch—say, the $30 million required to pick up all 10 Tumblers the studio plans to produce—you could also become Grand Marshall of the coolest spec racing series ever contemplated.

Here’s why anyone with the disposable income available to casually purchase 10 Tumblers, at $3 million a pop, should strongly consider pitting them against each other in a green flag showdown—along with a few other single-make series concepts that only render the madness of pitting Batman vs. Batman that much more thrilling.

Tumbler “Car”-kour Challenge

Any comic book or action movie fan of the past 20 years is well aware of how different the Tumbler was compared to Batmobiles of the past. Instead of the super-phallic sleek lines seen in Tim Burton’s 1989 revamp of the franchise, or the over-the-top winged edition piloted in Joel Silver’s Batman Forever flick, the Tumbler looks like an MRAP, crossed with an M1A1 Abrams, that was then injected with some type of mechanical steroid before spending time hanging out with the Optimus Prime at the Autobot gym.

It’s big. It’s brawny. It’s got more angles than the final round of the world snooker championship, and it’s riding on tires that wouldn’t look out of place at Monster Jam. Naturally, this kind of bruiser isn’t well-suited for a paved oval, and it’s hard to think of a closed course that could contain even one Tumbler, let alone 10 of them surging forward at full throttle.

Turning back to the movies that spawned this mega-machine, it’s clear that the best opportunity for testing out the creativity and talent of whoever’s lucky enough to snag a seat in the Tumbler Trouble Terrordome (*tentative name) is to let them loose in the kind of plus-size parkour environment it was designed to dominate. The Tumbler is frequently shown blasting through obstacles, devastating asphalt, and generally jumping from one precarious landing spot to another in the pursuit of justice. It’s no stretch to swap in avenging the innocent with some type of Byzantine points system that delivers bonuses for chaos caused and ranks drivers by their creativity in crunching any of the urban relics that scatter the playing field. Make the series less about lap times and more a combination of Global RallyCross and Super Smash Brothers, and you’ve got a winner.

While a $3 million entry fee might seem like a lot of cash to put down for the pleasure of essentially demo derbying the world’s toughest movie prop, consider, at least, how low your running costs will be: Each of these brutes is outfitted with an easy-to-maintain LS3 V-8 putting out 525 horsepower and 486 lb-ft of torque. Matched with a simple four-speed automatic gearbox, you’ll likely still be able to limp back to the pits should any of its “advanced software upgrades” fail, or you get lost in a competitor’s smoke screen.

Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing

If Mountain Dew and Mattel got together to organize a motorsports series, there’s no doubt that their combined team of lawyers would immediately talk them out of something like Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing. It’s a good thing, then, that this meeting of the pink plastic patrol is in no way sanctioned by anything one might recognize as an “organization.”

And yet, there’s something compelling about the impulse to unleash a group of grown adults on downhill course loaded with moguls and completely at the mercy of the force of gravity. While other types of racing rely on clever chassis engineering and tire choice to maximize grip and handling, Barbie Jeeps don’t have any suspension at all, and only the weakest of electric motors to overcome what rolling resistance there already is.

The rules are simple:

• Be over 18
• Wear a helmet
• Make it to the bottom of the track with the Jeep still intact
• Try not to die

If you can satisfy all four of those requirements, then Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing will welcome you with open arms. Then again, both of those arms might be broken. Your arms, too. You’ve been warned.

Rimac Nevera Battery Drain Endurance Challenge

Some spec racers are looking for something a little less rambunctious than the Tumbler, and with fewer Lord of the Flies elements than you’d find piloting an Extreme Barbie Jeep. To this more refined demographic, we propose something civilized yet still thrilling: the Rimac Nevera Battery Drain Endurance Challenge.

Rimac already builds a special “Time Attack” version of the Nevera, one of the world’s fastest electric supercars, and with a retail price of $3 million, you’re looking at Bruce Wayne money to get your hands on one. Once you do, and after the novelty of launching the nearly-2000 horsepower coupe from zero to 186 mph in just 9.22 seconds begins to wear off, it’s time to test your mettle against the other 11 Nevera owners.

Acceleration among the supercar set is, in this sanctioning body’s opinion, played out, and top-speed bragging rights are gauche. Instead, we propose that drivers see how far they can get around an oval track before the battery is completely wiped out. The catch? You’ll be out there in a pack with every other Nevera Time Attack in existence, which means you can bob, weave, and draft your way toward extending the roughly 300 miles of range listed by the factory into something resembling a championship trophy.

The Rimac’s 117-kWh battery pack is nearly the same size as that found in the Ford F-150 Lightning, which means there’s plenty of hypermiling potential should you wish to coast your way to victory after dropping down from the vehicle’s 259-mph terminal velocity. Or perhaps you’d prefer to block and bump your way to the mileage record. Either way, you’d be driving until that power pack calls it quits, making this perhaps the one single-make series where slow and steady might actually win the race.

Revive Fast Masters Jaguar XJ220 ESPN Extravaganza

After reading all that about Rimac, you’re probably thinking “no one is going to put a multi-million dollar fleet of supercars so they can rub fenders, cause wrecks, and cost that automaker a boatload of cash.” In another timeline, perhaps you might be right, but in ours, that exact scenario occurred in 1993. Not only that, it was televised.

Jaguar’s idea of handing over 10 of the 275 Jaguar XJ220s ever built to Tom Walkinshaw Racing, having them modified for track fun, and then tossing the keys to 50 of the world’s “past-tense fastest” retired racing drivers reads like a line from an accountant’s after-hours horror script. And yet, the British brand was all aboard, partnering with ESPN to broadcast “Fast Masters” as part of a planned six-round series.

All of that quickly went out the window as soon as it became clear that nearly every aspect of Fast Masters had been ill-advised. Held on a tiny 5/8 mile oval at Indianapolis Raceway Park, there was no room for the big-boned XJ220s to escape each other, nor much will on the part of the hired hands at the wheel to avoid contact, given that they had exactly zero financial responsibility any potential damages.

The first event was a display of metal-on-metal mayhem, and although Jaguar did its best to reconfigure the rules and preserve what little running stock it had left, it was overall an expensive mistake for the brand. Spending $7 million in early-’90s dollars was not a trivial enterprise for the modestly bankrolled company, and given that the XJ220 hadn’t even yet gone on sale in the United States, the promotional potential of broadcasting its pride and joy being blasted to pieces, wheel to wheel, was most likely limited. The plug was pulled after a single season, marking an end to one of the wildest spec racing series ever conceived.

XJ220s are out there. Let’s spin the whole thing back up!

Lamborghini Urus ST-X Super Trofeo

Lamborghini is no stranger to one-make racing, as it’s fielded a variety of Super Trofeo options for more than a decade. That being said, the world was deprived of perhaps the automaker’s greatest spectacle when a planned series that would have seen drivers compete head-to-head from behind the wheel of the Lamborghini Urus SUV failed to take off.

All the way back in 2018, Lamborghini began teasing fans with the Urus ST-X concept, a version of the hefty hauler that had seen 25 percent of its curb weight cut and all of its power preserved, making its 641 horses and 627 lb-ft of torque that much more potent. Lamborghini also installed fire gear, a roll cage, and a FIA-ready fueling system to go with the bark of its side-exit exhaust and 21-inch center-lock wheels. Think of it like a Tumbler for really, really successful dentists, and you’ve got the right idea.

Everything was apparently set for the Urus to make its on-track debut at the 2020 Super Troefo World Finals in an introductory race run alongside the company’s Huracan Super Trofeo series. The plan was to then expand the Urus fun into an “arrive and drive” type operation for dentists owners who could show up at any of its global venues and try their hand at hurtling this multi-ton mammoth around a road course.

You’ve probably figured out by now that none of the above ever happened. Sure, the Urus ST-X concept existed, and yes, there were plans to make it a legitimate racer, but it’s likely that the COVID pandemic was responsible for dashing those dreams before they could be put into action.

What we’re proposing is… do it anyway? Better late than never, surely there’s enough line space surplus to assemble an updated version of the ST-X. If Lamborghini’s smart, it will get this program back on the fast track before someone over at Ferrari beats them to the punch. Purosangue Pursuit, anyone?