Aurora engine

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The Aurora Motor Company was an American automobile manufacturer. Another source names the name Custom Automobile Corporation of America . The company was based in Branford, Connecticut from 1957 to 1958 . The founders were the Catholic clergyman Father Alfred A. Juliano and his order. The company had to file for bankruptcy after manufacturing a prototype at a cost of US $ 30,000.

description

Juliano had studied art before becoming a priest and had been interested in automobile design all his life . His family said he received a grant from GM that enabled him to study with Harley Earl , but that he did not reach him until he was ordained a priest. But he retained his interest in automobile design, combined with the belief that there is still a lot that can be done to make automobiles safer.

The Aurora was conceived, designed and built by Juliano. It had a 5486 mm long GRP body, the plans of which were drawn up on the drawing board for two years and which was under construction for three years. The high manufacturing quality was remarkable, especially when it came to the GRP body and the plastic windows. The retail price should be $ 12,000, just below the price of the most expensive US car, the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, which was $ 13,000. The body, which was insensitive to rust and minor damage, was particularly suitable for long journeys. The car had a tinted, transparent plastic "astrodom" (glass dome) with adjustable metal blinds inside. Fixed, hydraulic jacks that could be operated from the dashboard made changing tires easier. The spare wheel was housed on a platform in the front of the vehicle, which could be lowered to street level without having to touch the wheel.

The car had many safety components that were new at the time, but are standard today. These were e.g. B. Seat belts , a roll cage , a padded dashboard , a side impact protection and a safety steering column . The placement of the spare wheel in the front of the vehicle expanded the crumple zone . The most important innovation, however, which was not found in any other automobile of this time, was the possibility of automatically rotating the seats by 180 ° if a collision seemed inevitable.

The Aurora is mostly remembered for its looks, and it is often mentioned in the list of the ugliest cars, often as the ugliest of all. Two features in particular led to this assessment: the shovel-shaped bonnet with the wide radiator mouth, which was typical of futuristic vehicles at the time, and the strongly curved windshield. Both details were used for safety: the curved windshield was supposed to avoid contact with the heads of the occupants in an accident before the airbags were deployed , while the shovel-shaped front of the vehicle served as a large, foam-filled bumper that not only improved the aerodynamics, but also Should throw passers-by in a collision without injury.

The prototype had a GRP body that was connected to the chassis of a 1953 Buick via a mostly wooden subframe . It had not been adequately tested before the planned public presentation in 1957, broke fifteen times on the way to the press conference and had to be towed to seven different workshops. The main reason for this was a blockage in the fuel supply that had not been used for four years. After the car had already appeared hours late for its own presentation, it was not able to inspire the audience because of its appearance, its modest performance and its high price, and there were no pre-orders.

The company's financial situation was examined. Juliano announced that this was done at GM's instigation and compared himself to Preston Tucker . The matter was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service , charged by the Catholic Church with abuse of sacrificial funds, and eventually forced to leave the Order of the Holy Spirit . In fact, however, he had thrown himself into large debts to finance the company and later had to take an oath of disclosure . He lost the finished prototype to a car repair shop as compensation for unpaid repair bills. This prototype passed through several hands and eventually ended up behind a body shop in Cheshire in 1967. Juliano died in 1989 of a brain hemorrhage.

In 1993, British car enthusiast Andy Saunders from Poole (Dorset) discovered the car on a sketch in a book about dream cars. He said, “He was incredibly hideous. I immediately said to myself: I have to have it! ”. After years of searching, he finally discovered the car by the name of the workshop in a photo of the car, bought it unseen for US $ 1500 and had it shipped to the UK for another US $ 2000. The GRP body and the wooden subframe had suffered terribly from being stored in wind and weather, as had the interior fittings and the plastic windshield. The restoration turned out to be particularly difficult because there were no documents, not even photos, of the car, Father Juliano could no longer provide any information and no spare parts were available for the prototype. Nevertheless, the car was completed in early 2005. The car was unveiled to an amazed public at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and is now in the National Motor Museum .

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , p. 100. (English)
  2. ↑ Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 , chapter Aurora (V).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j " Jerry Garret: How Ugly? Put a Bag on That Car . New York Times. December 23, 2007