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.
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00000005 000005 This purple vehicle may look like a spaceship
00:07from a SciFi film, but it's actually a one-of-a-kind custom car, the Cosmotron.
00:1300006 00006 The whole car is perfect and the more I
00:17drive it I realise that the car is perfect.
00:1900007 00007 This kind of car has never been seen in
00:22this country before.
00:2300008 00008 The space age car was designed by Paul
00:26Bacon, who spent 18 months building the car, in a shed in his back garden.
00:31Once a project started, I always like to keep it moving and never let it stand still. If
00:36you do just a little bit every day, it will always get done. In the 60s in America, there
00:41was a few cars like this, but not too many. And when I was a kid, I was always told that
00:47by the year 2000, this is what cars would look like, and 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
00:59a reality.
01:00I went and bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8 litre straight six, around about 1998, and I took
01:09every single body panel off it, so I was left with just the rolling chassis and floor pan.
01:14I then braced that with extra steel, just to make sure it was stiff enough, so there'd
01:18be no flexing in the fibreglass body, and onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding
01:25foam. Then I sculpted the shape of the car. I used a piece of 10mm steel rod, and ran
01:31it from here, down to here, and that gave me the basic lines of the car. Once I'd got
01:37it to the shape I wanted it in polystyrene, I covered that in fibreglass, and then smoothed
01:43it all out to the car that you have now. I also made the tooling for the dome. The
01:48dome ring's made of steel. I made the tool for the dome, and sent it to a place called
01:52Dupless Domes, it used to be in Leicester, and they pumped up the dome. The dome sits
01:58on a steel ring that rises and falls on a hydraulic ram and hinge system. The dome itself
02:05is made of the same sort of acrylic plastic used in glider canopies.
02:10Paul stayed true to his design throughout, even if it meant using unconventional materials.
02:16We've got the 2.8 straight six, but modified, so it's running the six SU carbs. They're
02:23topped off with salt and pepper pots from John Lewis, because they look like cool chrome
02:26bullets. And the interior, we've got the crazy gear shift, got the one-off dashboard, one-off
02:33steering wheel. My wife actually stitched all the interior. The rear grille here, during
02:38the fifties, people would modify cars with anything that was around, and this kind of
02:42grille became popular, using a drawer pull off of old Chester drawers. Those drawer pulls
02:48are very hard to get now, so almost looking the same. These are actually lids off of a
02:52lot of tubes of moisturiser, which I found in a charity shop for about five pounds, and
02:58then cleaned up, and they're now on there. These are plastic, and they won't go rusted.
03:03Paul and his wife Kirstie took the Cosmotron to car shows around Europe, but after two
03:08years, they were ready to move on to a brand new project. I sold it in order to build another
03:13car, because for me, the building of the car is better than the final owning of the car.
03:19Paul's always doing projects, crazy projects. He's not happy unless he's making something.
03:22He's on to his next car project now, and Cosmotron's actually his second car. Luckily for Paul,
03:28car enthusiast Martin Smith had been coveting Cosmo for two years. I decided to buy the
03:33car because for years, I wanted a different sort of car. What I like about the car so
03:37much is the way it looks, the space age look of it, the craziness of it, the actual bubble
03:43top, the colour, the whole way the car's built. The 60s crazy look is what I really go for.
03:51And Martin had fallen in love with the bizarre motor. I've done about 800 mile in it, and
03:56it's been brilliant. It's like being in a goldfish bowl, looking out on the world.
04:02Luckily, Martin's wife Cathy shares his enthusiasm. We're a bit crazy in our family. We give him
04:08all names, so he's Cosmo to us, but I do love him. He's a lovely car. Drives so nice.
04:16People's reaction to the car, when you drive it down the road, everyone stops, everyone
04:20stares, everyone wants to take a picture. I think just general amazement. It's very,
04:26very, very eye-catching. Unique as well, I find.
04:29I pull up into a petrol garage. People come up to me, what sort of car is this? Is it
04:34a kit car? Who makes it? Is it a production line car? They don't understand how it works.
04:38If I took it down the pub, my mates would love that. There would be photographs taken,
04:42it would be in the papers. I mean, it would be splashed everywhere.
04:45And now Martin has the Cosmotron for himself. He has no intention of letting it go.
04:50It's probably the first bubble top car that's ever been made in England. I think it needs
04:54to stay in England. So I'm going to try my best to keep it in England and never sell it.