Four pictures showing a homemade Batmobile parked in an alley in Shanghai have become popular among netizens in China. According to Feng, the police officer who took the pictures, the vehicle is actually a life-size model of Batman's futuristic ride.

More than three meters wide and with rear wheels almost half as tall as a grown person, the low-slung model car presents a fancy sight. That said, the car is visibly rough around the edges, with scratches on its dull windscreen and general blemishes on its body. Without an engine or powertrain, this is no more than a poor man's Batmobile – but not in the eyes of Li Weilei, a 26-year-old model hobbyist from Shandong, who made this eye-catching tribute to the Batman movies with four friends.

With extensive experience in prop design and talent in cutting and smoldering, Li and his friends built this two-ton model out of 10 tons of scrap metal, hand-polishing the exterior because of their limited budget. After two months of hard work and at the cost of 70,000 yuan , the model was finished in time for the opening of "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2."

The attention around their Batmobile (due to copyright concerns, Li doesn't call his labor of love "Batmobile") has deeply inspired Li and his friends.

"We've built a dozen Batman's cars. Two of them are in Shanghai, while the rest are on display in other parts of the country," Li said. "Recently, we completed two 1:1 fighter plane models."

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