Spending 18 months of sweat dripping labor in his backyard shed (???), Englishman Paul Bacon managed to build one of today’s oddest Frankenstein car creations: the Cosmotron. Using the bones of a 1998 BMW Z3 with a 2.8-liter inline-six, Bacon stripped the ride down and re-built it using fiberglass laid over polystyrene foam to create a new shaped, Jetsons-like body.
“In the 60s in America, there were a few cars like this, but not too many,” says Bacon in an interview with Barcroft. “When I was a kid, I was always told that by the year 2000, this is what cars would look like and they don’t, so I was incredibly disappointed.” Me too!
As the owner of Cyclone Works, a shop specializing in unique bicycles, the 41-year old Bacon is a true man of idealism, always willing to spend time on a mind bending project. In order for an eccentric build-up like this to become possible, though, Bacon says that it must first be approached from a rational and meticulous process.
In describing his build-up of the Cosmotron, Bacon sounds pragmatically grounded, saying, “I went and bought a BMW Z3 with the 2.8-liter straight six, around about 1998, and I took every single body panel off it so I was left with the just the rolling chassis and floor pan. I then braced that with extra steel, just to make sure it was stiff enough so there would be no flexing in the fiberglass body and onto that I bonded polystyrene and expanding foam. Then I sculpted the shape of the car.”
In the end, the 192 bhp, street legal ride is about as close to perfection as a visionary ride can get, providing all of us auto enthusiasts with a glimpse of the future that should’ve happened.
4Wheel Online Blog - Automotive News 