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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MotorTranscript
00:00 00:36 COMM: This purple vehicle may look like a
00:07 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 00:51 PAUL BACON
00:20 This kind of car has never been seen in this country before.
00:23 00:56 COMM: The space age car was designed by Paul
00:26 Bacon, who spent 18 months building the car, in a shed in his back garden.
00:31 01:06 PAUL BACON
00:32 Once the project started I always liked to keep it moving and never let it stand still.
00:36 If you do just a little bit every day it will always get done. In the 60s in America there
00:41 was a few cars like this but not too many and when I was a kid I was always told that
00:47 by the year 2000 this is what cars would look like and they don't so, incredibly disappointing.
00:53 01:27 COMM: The 41 year old sat down and drew his
00:56 dream car, then worked out how to make his dream a reality.
01:00 01:33 PAUL BACON
01:01 I went and bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8 litre straight six, around about 1998 and I took
01:09 every single body panel off it so I was left with just the rolling chassis and floor pan.
01:14 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 fibre glass body and onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding
01:25 foam. Then I sculpted the shape of the car. I used a piece of 10mm steel rod and ran it
01:32 from here down to here and that gave me the basic lines of the car. Once I got it to the
01:38 shape I wanted it in polystyrene I covered that in fibre glass and then smoothed it all
01:43 out to the car that you have now.
01:45 02:22 PAUL BACON
01:46 I made the tooling for the dome, the dome ring is made of steel, I made the tool for
01:51 the dome and sent it to a place called Dupless Domes, it used to be in Leicester and they
01:56 pumped up the dome. The dome sits on a steel ring that rises and falls on a hydraulic ram
02:02 and hinge system. The dome itself is made of the same sort of acrylic plastic used in
02:09 glider canopies.
02:10 02:42 COMM: Paul stayed true to his design throughout,
02:13 even if it meant using unconventional materials.
02:15 02:49 PAUL BACON
02:16 We've got the 2.8 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 and the interior, we've got the crazy gear shift, we've got the one off dashboard,
02:33 one off steering wheel, my wife actually stitched all the interior. The rear grille here, during
02:38 the 50s people would modify cars with anything that was around and this kind of grille became
02:43 popular using a draw pull off of old Chester drawers, those draw pulls are very hard to
02:49 get now so almost looking the same. These are actually lids off of a lot of tubes of
02:53 moisturiser which I found in a charity shop for about five pounds and then cleaned up
02:59 and they are now on there. These are plastic and they won't go rusted.
03:02 03;06 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 new
03:10 project.
03:11 03;14 PAUL BACON
03:12 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 03;21 KIRSTY BACON
03:19 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 03;34 COMM: Luckily for Paul, car enthusiast Martin
03:29 Smith had been coveting Cosmo for two years.
03:32 03;40 MARTIN SMITH
03:33 I've always wanted to buy the car because for years I wanted a different sort of car.
03:36 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 03;59 COMM: And Martin had fallen in love with the
03:53 bizarre motor.
03:54 04;02 MARTIN SMITH
03:55 I've done about 800 mile in it and it's been brilliant, it's like being in a goldfish
03:59 bowl looking out on the world.
04:01 04;12 COMM: Luckily Martin's wife Cathy shares
04:04 his enthusiasm.
04:05 04;17 CATHY SMITH
04:06 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, he's a lovely car, drives so nice.
04:14 04;29 PAUL SMITH
04:16 People's reaction to the car, when you drive it down the road, everyone stops, everyone
04:20 stares, everyone wants to take a picture, I think just general amazement.
04:24 04;42 PAUL SMITH
04:25 It's very, very, very eye catching, unique as well I find.
04:28 04;47 PAUL SMITH
04:29 I pull up into a petrol garage, people come up to me, what sort of car is this, is it
04:34 a kit car, who makes it, is it a production line car, they don't understand how it works.
04:38 04;56 MARTIN SMITH
04:39 If I took it down the pub, my mates would love that, there would be photographs taken,
04:41 it would be in the papers, I mean it would be splashed everywhere.
04:44 04;59 COMM: And now Martin has the Cosmo Triumph
04:47 for himself, he has no intention of letting it go.
04:50 04;59 PAUL SMITH
04:51 It's probably the first bubble top car that's ever been made in England, I think it needs
04:54 to stay in England.
04:55 So I'm going to try my best to keep it in England and never sell it.
05:01 (bell ringing)