00:06 COOM: This purple vehicle may look like a
space ship from a sci-fi film, but its actually a one of a kind custom car, The Cosmotron.
00:17 MARTIN: The whole car is perfect, the more
I drive it the more I realise that the car is perfect.
00:21 PAUL: This kind of car has never been seen
in this country before.
00:25 COMM: The space age car was designed by Paul
Bacon, who spent 18 months building the car in a shed in his back garden.
00:32 PAUL: Once the project started I always liked
to keep it moving and never let it stand still.
If you just do a little bit everyday it will always get done.
In the 60s in America, there were a few cars like this but not too many and when I was
a kid I was always told by the year 2000 this is what cars would look like and they don't
so incredibly disappointing.
00:54 COMM: The 41 year old sat down and drew his
dream car, then worked out how to make his dream a reality.
01:02 PAUL: I went a bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8
litre straight six, around about 1998 and I took every single body panel off it so it
was left with just the rolling chassy and floor plan, I then braced that with extra
steal just to make sure it was stiff enough so there would be no flexing in the fibre
glass body and onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding foam, then I sculpted the shape
of the car, I used a piece of 10mil steal rod and run it from here down to here and
that gave me the basic lines of the car, once I got it to the shape i wanted it in polystyrene,
I covered that in fibre glass and then smoothed it all out to the car you have now.
I also made the tooling for the dome, the dome ring is made of steel, i made the tool
for the dome and sent it to a place called duplus domes it used to be in Leicester and
they pumped up the dome, the dome sits on a steel ring that rises and falls on a hydraulic
ram and hinge system,the dome itself is made of the same sort of acrylic plastic use in
glider canopies.
02:02 COMM: Paul stayed true to his design throughout…
even if it meant using unconventional materials.
02:17 PAUL: we've got the two eight straight six,
but modified so its running the six SU carbs that are topped off with salt and pepper pots
from John Lewis because they look like cool chrome bullets.
02:28 PAUL: And the interior, we got the crazy gear
shift, got the one off dashboard, one off steering wheel, my wife actually stitched
all the interior.
02:38 PAUL: The rear grill here, during the 50s
people would modify cars with anything that was around and this kind of grill became popular
using a drawer pull of a old chester drawers, those drawer pulls are very hard to get now
and almost looking the same lids off a lot of tubes of moisturizer which i found in a
charity shop for about £5 and then cleaned up and they are now on there.
These are plastic and they wont go rusty.
03:03 COMM: Paul and his wife took the Cosmotron
to car shows around Europe but after 2 years they were ready to move on to a brand new
project.
03:13 PAUL: I sold it in order to build another
car because for me building another car is better than the final owning of the car.
03:20 KIRSTY: Paul's always doing projects, crazy
projects, he's not happy unless he is making something, he's onto his next car project
now and the Costmotron was actually his second car.
03:28 COMM: Luckily for Paul, car enthusiast Martin
Smith has been coveting Cosmo for 2 years.
03:34 MARTIN: I decided to buy the car because for
years I wanted a different sort of car.
What I like about the car so much is that the way it looks, the space age look of it,
the craziness of it, the actual bubble top, the color, the whole way the cars built the
60s crazy look is what I really go for.
03:52 COMM: And Martin has fallen in love with the
bizarre motor.
03:55 MARTIN: I've done about 800 miles in it and
its been brilliant, its like being in a goldfish bowl looking out on the world.
04:03 COMM: Luckily, Martin's wife Kathy shares
his enthusiasm.
04:07 KATHY: We're a bit crazy in our family we
give them all names so he's cosmo to us, but I do love him, he's a lovely car, drives so
nice.
04:16 PAUL: People's reaction to the car when you
drive it down the road everyone stops, everyone stares, everyone wants to take a picture and
I think just general amazement.
04:27 STEWART: Its very, very, very eye catching
and unique as well I find
04:31 MARTIN: I pull up to the petrol garage people
come up to me "what sort of car is it?
is this a kit car?
who makes it?
is it a production line car?"
they just don't understand how it works.
04:39 TONY: If I took it down the pub my mates would
love that, there'd be photographs taken, it would be in the papers, it would just be splashed
everywhere.
04:45 COMM: And now Martin has the Cosmotron for
himself and he has no intention of letting it go.
04:51 MARTIN: Its probably the first bubble top
car thats ever been made in England and I think it needs to stay in England so you know
I'm going to try me best to keep it in England and never sell it.