Aurora Motor Company Aurora

The Aurora was conceived and built by a Catholic Priest called Father Alfred Juliano in 1957. It was an experimental safety car constructed from fibreglass with a clear plastic dome roof and shoved on a Buick chassis. It was quite a novel development at the time, the body was rust proof (although the chassis would no doubt rot away leaving you with no more than a stationary plastic lump with seats), it had integrated hydraulic jacks to help you change a wheel, seatbelts, a rollcage, padded panels, side impact bars and a collapsible steering column. Handily it had seats that could swivel around - not for conferences with rear passengers when stationary, but so that in the event of an impending head-on crash you could quickly swivel 180 degrees to lessen the damage to your body on impact. The rather odd looking bloated front was designed to scoop up wandering pedestrians rather than squashing them. Sadly nobody ever wanted to buy one, not helped by the fact it broke down 7 times on the way to the press conference for its unveiling, and Father Juliano's company went bankrupt. The one and only example is now owned by a collector in England.