Cosmotron Car - Designer Builds Sci-Fi Vehicle In His Backyard I RIDICULOUS RIDES
The Costomtron, affectionately known as Cosmo, is a unique car designed to look like a 1960s bubble car. The Jetsons-style space age design was created by Paul Bacon, who spent 18-months building the car from a shed in his back garden. The 41-year-old sat down and drew his dream car then worked out what materials he could use to make his dream a reality. He used the chassis of an old BMW Z3 as the base for his car and sculpted its unusual curves using polystyrene, foam and fiberglass matting.
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00:00 00:36 COMM: This purple vehicle may look like a
00:06 spaceship from a sci-fi film, but it's actually a one of a kind custom car, the Cosmotron.
00:13 00:46 PAUL BACON
00:14 The whole car is perfect, and the more I drive it I realise that the car is perfect.
00:19 00:52 PAUL BACON
00:20 This kind of car has never been seen in this country before.
00:22 00:56 COMM: The space age car was designed by Paul
00:25 Bacon, who spent 18 months building the car, in a shed in his back garden.
00:31 01:06 PAUL BACON
00:32 Once a project started I always like to keep it moving and never let it stand still.
00:35 If you do just a little bit every day it will always get done.
00:39 In the 60s in America there was a few cars like this but not too many, and when I was
00:45 a kid I was always told that by the year 2000 this is what cars would look like, and they
00:50 don't so incredibly disappointing.
00:52 01:31 COMM: The 41 year old sat down and drew his
00:56 dream car, then worked out how to make his dream a reality.
00:59 01:37 PAUL BACON
01:00 I went and bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8 litre straight six, around about 1998, and I took
01:08 every single body panel off it so I was left with just the rolling chassis and floor pan.
01:13 I then braced that with extra steel just to make sure it was stiff enough so there would
01:18 be no flexing in the fiberglass body, and onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding
01:25 foam.
01:26 Then I sculpted the shape of the car, I used a piece of 10mm steel rod and ran it from
01:32 here down to here and that gave me the basic lines of the car.
01:37 Once I got it to the shape I wanted it in polystyrene I covered that in fiberglass and
01:42 then smoothed it all out to the car that you have now.
01:45 I also made the tooling for the dome, the dome ring is made of steel, I made the tool
01:50 for the dome and sent it to a place called Dupless Domes, it used to be in Leicester,
01:55 and they pumped up the dome.
01:57 The dome sits on a steel ring that rises and falls on a hydraulic ram and hinge system.
02:03 The dome itself is made of the same sort of acrylic plastic used in glider canopies.
02:09 02;10 COMM: Paul stayed true to his design throughout,
02:12 even if it meant using unconventional materials.
02:16 We've got the 28 straight six, but modified so it's running the six SU carbs, they're
02:23 topped off with salt and pepper pots from John Lewis because they look like cool chrome
02:26 bullets.
02:27 And the interior, we've got the crazy gear shift, we've got the one off dashboard, one
02:32 off steering wheel, my wife actually stitched all the interior.
02:37 The rear grille here, during the 50's people would modify cars with anything that was around
02:42 and this kind of grille became popular, using a draw pull off of old Chester drawers.
02:47 Those draw pulls are very hard to get now, so almost looking the same.
02:51 These are actually lids off of a lot of tubes of moisturiser, which I found in a charity
02:55 shop for about five pounds and then cleaned up and they are now on there.
03:00 These are plastic and they won't go rusty.
03:02 02;50 COMM: Paul and his wife Kirsty took the Cosmatron
03:05 to car shows around Europe, but after two years they were ready to move on to a brand
03:10 new project.
03:11 I sold it in order to build another car, because for me the building of the car is better than
03:16 the final owning of the car.
03:18 Paul's always doing projects, crazy projects, he's not happy unless he's making something,
03:22 he's on to his next car project now and Cosmatron is actually his second car.
03:26 Luckily for Paul, car enthusiast Martin Smith had been coveting Cosmo for two years.
03:32 I decided to buy the car because for years I wanted a different sort of car.
03:35 What I like about the car so much is the way it looks, the space age look of it, the craziness
03:42 of it, the actual bubble top, the colour, the whole way the car is built, the 60s crazy
03:48 look is what I really go for.
03:50 02;59 COMM: And Martin had fallen in love with the
03:52 bizarre motor.
03:53 I've done about 800 miles in it and it's been brilliant, it's like being in a goldfish
03:59 bowl looking out on the world.
04:01 03;06 COMM: Luckily Martin's wife Cathy shares
04:04 his enthusiasm.
04:05 We're a bit crazy in our family, we give him all names, so he's Cosmo to us, but I do love
04:11 him.
04:12 He's a lovely car, drives so nice.
04:16 People's reaction to the car, when you drive it down the road, everyone stops, everyone
04:19 stares, everyone wants to take a picture.
04:22 I think just general amazement.
04:25 It's very, very, very eye catching.
04:27 Unique as well I find.
04:28 I pull up into a petrol garage, people come up to me, what sort of car is this, is it
04:33 a kit car, who makes it, is it a production line car, they don't understand how it works.
04:37 If I took it down the pub, my mates would love that.
04:40 There would be photographs taken, it would be in the papers, I mean it would be splashed
04:44 everywhere.
04:45 03;57 COMM: And now Martin has the Cosmo Triumph
04:46 for himself.
04:48 He has no intention of letting it go.
04:50 It's probably the first bubble top car that's ever been made in England.
04:54 I think it needs to stay in England.
04:55 So I'm going to try my best to keep it in England and never sell it.
04:59 (upbeat music)
05:01 (bells chiming)