The 1964 Ford Aurora Was An Incredible Space Age Station Wagon Concept

Long earlier than minivans, crossovers, and enormous SUVs have become the cars of preference for riding children around, station wagons held the family-hauler crown. Wagons just like the Chrysler Town and Country, Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and Mercury Colony Park occupied driveways all around the United States withinside the Sixties and 1970s. 

Ford, specifically had the Country Squire collection of wagons that have been embellished with a whole forest`s really well worth of timber paneling and stretched numerous town blocks in length. The 1961 Country Squire can be optioned out to quite simply seat 9 passengers in a shipment area of 93.five cubic ft at the back of the primary row of seating (through Ford). For comparison, a 2023 Ford Expedition has 104.6 cubic ft of shipment at the back of the the front seat. The Expedition can healthy barely greater shipment than the Country Squire, however it cannot pretty seat nearly a whole baseball team's really well worth of passengers. 

At the New York World's Fair, Ford unveiled a idea that it idea became the maximum superior station wagon to ever pop out of Dearborn, the 1964 Ford Aurora.

A dwelling room on wheels

For many years, station wagons from all automakers have been basically simply huge sedans with greater shipment area, each automatically and in widespread function. Ford desired to alternate that with the Aurora idea. Ford's director of styling on the time, Gene Bordinat said: "Of same significance, it is able to foretell the day of station wagon designs with absolutely specific chassis additives divorced from passenger vehicle lines ... It is a rolling laboratory of recent thoughts in styling and engineering for the future."

In a brochure for the Aurora idea, Ford said that the brand new area-age wagon featured no much less than 23 specific capabilities that set it aside from each different car at the market. Those capabilities included (however have been now no longer constrained to): a wraparound windshield, electroluminescent lighting, a clamshell rear access system, indoors swivel chairs, and a polarizing sunroof. Strangely, the Aurora got here geared up with a sound-isolated "kid's compartment" withinside the lower back in which kids have been separated from the relaxation of the passengers with the aid of using an indoors energy window.

The indoors of the Aurora appeared greater like a dwelling room than a conventional station wagon. The lower back seat became known as a settee and appeared the part. It additionally sported a "communications console" that tripled as a radio, tv set, and refreshments cabinet. In addition to the stately indoors, the Aurora had a yoke guidance wheel now no longer in contrast to the configuration that is all of the rage amongst EVs today.

Decades beforehand of its time

On the outside, the Aurora took the area-race craze aesthetics from the time to heart. It had a sharp the front nostril and a greenhouse large sufficient for a rain forest. The vehicle did not have conventional headlights, however 12 one-inch sealed beam lighting fixtures in an array that Ford called "minibank headlamps" that it claimed would "produce managed street illumination with many tiers among the dimmest and brightest extremes." Those have been basically daylight hours going for walks lighting fixtures, many years earlier than that became a not unusualplace function on maximum cars. 

The Aurora became 227.fifty five inches lengthy consistent with Ford and had a 131-inch wheelbase. The aforementioned 2023 Ford Expedition has a 131.6-inch wheelbase at its longest MAX configuration and is a complete of 221.nine inches lengthy. 

Like maximum idea automobiles that driven the envelope, Ford by no means supposed the Aurora to grow to be a complete production. It became greater of a check mattress for all of the wild station-wagon associated thoughts that Ford had on the time. Some thoughts just like the yoke guidance wheel and so-called "minibank headlamps" are forerunners to capabilities we see today. But a few capabilities, just like the sound proofed "kid's compartment withinside the lower back of the wagon, are higher off staying in 1964.