More than a decade before George Barris transformed it into TV’s Batmobile, the Lincoln Futura was the sensation of the 1955 auto show circuit. Here’s rare footage of the original Futura in action on the streets of New York City.

Benson Ford Sr. is the least well known of Henry Ford’s three grandsons. His older brother Henry II (1917-1987) was Ford Motor Company’s emperor, serving as president or chairman from 1945 to 1980, while his younger brother William Clay Ford, Sr. (1925-2014) was the chairman of Ford’s design committee and the father of current Ford executive chairman Bill Ford, Jr. Middle brother Benson (1919-1978) served a number of lesser roles in the company and passed away, sadly, at only 59. At the time of this filming he was a Ford vice-president and general manager of the Lincoln-Mercury division.

In this short clip from 1955, Benson pulls rank for some sweet PR duty: He takes the fabulous Lincoln Futura for a spin through Manhattan, around Central Park and past the front door of the United Nation headquarters on First Avenue. True to its name, as the Futura cruises alongside all the conventional 1950s cars and trucks on the streets of New York, it looks like something shot straight out of a time machine.

The dream car, designed by John Najjar and Bill Schmidt of Ford Styling, built on a prototype Continental Mark II chassis, and constructed by Ghia of Turin at a cost of $250,000, was a genuine show-stopper in its day. In an interesting historical twist, Ford said the car’s lines were inspired by two marine creatures, the manta ray and the mako shark. GM would later claim the same influences for two memorable Corvette concepts, with remarkably different results.

Of course, we all know the fate of the Futura: After appearing in the 1959 MGM movie It Started With a Kiss with Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford, the show car was discarded by Ford, eventually ending up on the back lot of California customizer George Barris. In 1966, Barris transformed the Futura into the far-out TV Batmobile, eliminating the bubble canopy and adding a kitschy bat-themed paint job and other gimmicks. The Hollywood version certainly has its fans: Countless tributes and copies have been built, and Batmobile no. 1 sold at auction in 2013 for $4.62 million. But Lincoln purists prefer to remember the car in its original Futura state, as shown in this great 1955 video. Enjoy.