04-06-2005, 05:15 AM
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#16 (permalink)
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Devoted
Donor
Location: New England
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Craven didn't drop the text of his link in regarding that first picture, so I'll do it for him:
Quote:
COMEBACK OF THE WORLD'S UGLIEST CAR
A bizarre car that has been dubbed the 'ugliest automobile in the world' is today back on the road 50 years after its launch.
The unique Aurora, a 19 feet long monster that was built by an eccentric New York priest as the ultimate safety vehicle, is now turning heads again.
Father Alfred Juliano bankrupted himself creating the prototype, which remained the only one ever built because the contraption was so full of faults no one wanted one.
It was supposed to be the safest car ever built and included features that are now common, but at the time were unheard of.
It had seatbelts, a roll cage, side-impact bars, a collapsible steering column, foam-filled bumpers and a padded instrument panel.
Its windscreen was curved away from the driver so the possibility of impact with it was reduced.
This design meant that windscreen wipers were not required, but it also distorted the view through it.
The silver and black Aurora included a large "front-end air-scoop" instead of a conventional grill. This was to reduce frictional drag and to lessen injuries to pedestrians it hit.
But its most peculiar safety feature was the seats that swivelled 180 degrees so before a crash those inside could turn round and take the impact backwards.
The silver sedan, shaped like a whale with its mouth gaping, had been sitting in a field in the US for nearly 30 years before madcap Brit Andy Saunders snapped it up.
He has spent the last 12 years of his life doing up the motor that was a disaster from its launch in 1957.
On that day Father Alfred Juliano had planned a huge media party to greet his 30,000 dollar invention.
But TV reporters had to wait all day because it broke down 15 times on the journey to the launch and was towed to seven garages.
The Aurora, which had six headlights, was funded partially by Father Juliano's congregation which donated cash to his whacky project.
After the ambitious scheme failed and Father Juliano went bankrupt the car was taken on by several other owners before it was abandoned ten years after its launch.
It was rediscovered in a field behind a bodyworks shop in Branford, Connecticut.
Andy Saunders, from Poole, Dorset, said: "I was reading a classic cars magazine in 1993 and saw this piece under the "discovered" section about the Aurora being found.
"I thought to myself that I had never seen a car so ugly in all my life but I knew I just had to have it.
"Luckily in the picture in the magazine there was the name of the bodyworks business so I got a number from directory inquiries and called the owner.
"He told me it had been left at his business in 1967 to have some work done but for one reason or another nothing happened to it and it remained in this field ever since.
"Although I had only seen a picture of it, and even in though it looked like it had fallen to bits, I made him an offer because I really wanted it.
"I agreed to pay 1,500 dollars and I had to pay another 2,000 dollars to get it shipped over here from New York.
"When I first saw it in real life I took a deep breath and thought to myself "what have you done?"
"It was originally marketed as the 'world's safest automobile', but was quickly dubbed the 'world's ugliest automobile' - and it's easy to see why.
"I knew straight away it would take me a long time to restore it but I never thought for a minute it would take 12 years.
"The bodywork is made of fibre-glass but parts of it are made of wood and the wood was completely rotten.
"There was no interior whatsoever, that had all been destroyed by the sun - and the windscreen had just turned to yellow.
"When I first started I would work solidly for weeks and weeks and then step back and it looked like nothing had been done do it. It was so demoralising.
"Because this prototype was the only one ever made there were no spare parts to use. So I had to have everything made. It cost much more than I thought it would.
"Although I had photographs of the outside of it to work from there were no pictures of the interior so I had to just use a vision of what I thought it would have looked like in 1957.
"I knew what shape and size the seats were because the frames were still there, but the rest of it was down to my imagination so it probably isn't exactly how it was.
"I have done a lot of ridiculous things with cars, but this has been by far the most difficult.
"It was as if Father Juliano never wanted it to work - possibly that's because of all my swearing.
"The most difficult thing to get hold of was the windscreen. I had several commissioned that didn't work out. No one knows how the original was made.
"Now it is restored the reaction has been incredible. People are amazed at it and it's surprising how many remember it from the failed launch in 1957.
"The Aurora will be on display at the Beaulieu Motor Museum for the next year, then I will get it out on the road.
"I'm not sure what I will do with it after that, but possibly I might sell it to a prototype museum in America."
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