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. Bacon 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 fiber-glass matting.
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00:0000.06 This purple vehicle may look like a spaceship
00:07from a sci fi film, but its actually a one of a kind, custom car. The Cosmotron.
00:1300.22 The whole car is perfect, the more I drive
00:18it I realise it's perfect.
00:1900.24 This kind of car has never been seen in this
00:22country before.
00:2300.28 The Space Mage car design was by Paul Bacon
00:26who spent 18 months building the car, in a shed in his back garden.
00:31Once a project started, I always liked to keep it moving and never let it stand still.
00:36If you do just a little bit every day, it will always get done.
00:39In the 60s in America, there was a few cars like this, but not too many.
00:44And when I was a kid, I was always told that by the year 2000, this is what cars would look like.
00:50And they don't, so incredibly disappointing.
00:53The 41-year-old sat down and drew his dream car, then worked out how to make his dream a reality.
01:00I went and bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8 litre straight six, around about 1998.
01:07And I took every single body panel off it, so I was left with just the rolling chassis and floor pan.
01:13I then braced that with extra steel, just to make sure it was stiff enough,
01:17so there would be no flexing in the fiberglass body.
01:20And onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding foam.
01:25Then I sculpted the shape of the car.
01:27I used a piece of 10mm steel rod and ran it from here, down to here.
01:33And that gave me the basic lines of the car.
01:36Once I got it to the shape I wanted it in polystyrene,
01:39I covered that in fiberglass and then smoothed it all out to the car that you have now.
01:45I also made the tooling for the dome.
01:47The dome ring is made of steel.
01:49I made the tool for the dome and sent it to a place called Dupless Domes,
01:53it used to be in Leicester, and they pumped up the dome.
01:56The dome sits on a steel ring that rises and falls on a hydraulic ram and hinge system.
02:03The dome itself is made of the same sort of acrylic plastic used in glider canopies.
02:09Paul stayed true to his design throughout, even if it meant using unconventional materials.
02:15We've got the 2.8 straight six, but modified, so it's running the six SU carbs.
02:22They're topped off with salt and pepper pots from John Lewis,
02:25because they look like cool chrome bullets.
02:27And the interior, we've got the crazy gear shift,
02:30we've got the one-off dashboard, one-off steering wheel.
02:34My wife actually stitched all the interior.
02:37The rear grille here, during the 50s, people would modify cars with anything that was around,
02:42and this kind of grille became popular, using a drawer pull off of old Chester drawers.
02:47Those drawer pulls are very hard to get now, so almost looking the same.
02:51These are actually lids off of a lot of tubes of moisturiser,
02:54which I found in a charity shop for about £5, and then cleaned up, and they're now on there.
03:00These are plastic, and they won't go rusted.
03:02Paul and his wife Kirstie took the Cosmatron to car shows around Europe,
03:07but after two years they were ready to move on to a brand new project.
03:11I sold it in order to build another car,
03:13because for me, the building of the car is better than the final owning of the car.
03:18Paul's always doing projects, crazy projects.
03:20He's not happy unless he's making something.
03:22He's on to his next car project now, and Cosmatron's actually his second car.
03:26Luckily for Paul, car enthusiast Martin Smith had been coveting Cosmo for two years.
03:32I decided to buy the car because for years I wanted a different sort of car.
03:35What I like about the car so much is the way it looks, the space age look of it,
03:41the craziness of it, the actual bubble top, the colour, the whole way the car's built.
03:46The 60s crazy look is what I really go for.
03:50And Martin had fallen in love with the bizarre motor.
03:53I've done about 800 miles in it, and it's been brilliant.
03:57It's like being in a goldfish bowl, looking out on the world.
04:02Luckily, Martin's wife Cathy shares his enthusiasm.
04:06We're a bit crazy in our family. We give him all names, so he's Cosmo to us.
04:10But I do love him. He's a lovely car. Drives so nice.
04:15People's reaction to the car, when you drive it down the road,
04:18everyone stops, everyone stares, everyone wants to take a picture.
04:22I think just general amazement.
04:24It's very, very, very eye-catching.
04:27Unique as well, I find.
04:29I pull up into a petrol garage.
04:31People come up to me, what sort of car is this?
04:33Is it a kit car? Who makes it? Is it a production line car?
04:36They don't understand how it works.
04:38If I took it down the pub, my mates would love that.
04:40There'd be photographs taken, it'd be in the papers.
04:42I mean, it would be splashed everywhere.
04:44And now Martin has the Cosmotron for himself.
04:47He has no intention of letting it go.
04:50It's probably the first bubble top car that's ever been made in England.
04:54I think it needs to stay in England.
04:56So I'm going to try my best to keep it in England and never sell it.