Holy F1 Batman! The Batpod's gone public

We aren't going to make a secret of it: of all the superhero films out this year, we're most excited about The Dark Knight. As luck would have it, we've already spotted the Bat bike.

Naturally we just (ahem) happened to be at the British Grand Prix practice session Friday before last. And there, casually parked up against the Panasonic Toyota F1 trailer, was the new Bat bike. We can only assume that the man himself was either enjoying a cup of tea or beating the snot out of thieves in the car park.

Slightly batty
This is the Bat bike or, as it's known in the film, the Batpod. We aren't sure what the pod bit refers to   we were expecting some sort of mini bubble car that Batman had to squeeze himself into.

Guns. On a bike!
Now that's thinking outside the box. And check out those tyres, they look like they could keep even the most incompetent motorcyclist upright. Sadly, they didn't let us test this hypothesis.

You call that fast?
Over there in the distance you can just about make out the Panasonic Toyota F1 car, with an added Dark Knight logo. It does 0 to 60 mph (96km/h) in a bugger all, easily beating the Bat bike's 5.3 seconds.

Toyota's dark knight
The Bat logo was added to the Toyota TF108 cars for the weekend of the British Grand Prix. It strikes us as logical that the next Batmobile should in fact be an F1 car. It can't be any more hassle to get in and out of than the current one, although speed bumps might be an issue. Surely the don't have speed bumps in Gotham?