Oh no, Renault! The Ondelios is too much like the Aurora

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At the recent Paris Motor Show, amid the smoke, epilesy-inducing light shows, barely dressed dancers and fanged sports cars, there was a familar face. Well, not so much a familar face, but an awful and frightening one: The Renault Ondelios concept car (right), sporting a huge, pillow-lipped, baleen-filled smile that was oh-so-reminiscent of the infamous Aurora (below), a car widely regarded as the ugliest ever made.

Compare for yourself.

I know it’s traumatic. But it’s important to know how far designers can go wrong. The Aurora was the creation of a Catholic priest, Father Alfred A. Juliano, who in the mid-1950s, with the backing of his parishioners in Branford, Conn., set out to build a lifesaving car. Father Juliano, it seems, was a frustrated car designer who was sketching cars even as he was studying at the seminary. According to his family -- and as reported in a story in the New York Times -- a scholarship offer to work for General Motors under Harley Earl arrived too late, and Father Juliano had to decline. Boy, if that doesn’t sound like divine intervention.

Built on the wrecked chassis of an old Buick, the Aurora featured a distinctive gullet, constructed of soft foam rubber, intended to safely scoop up luckless pedestrians who wandered into the vehicle’s path -- although such an incident was unlikely, since the natural impulse is to run away from the visage as fast as possible.

The Aurora had many novel safety features, including a convex windshield bubbled forward in order to minimize head injuries in a crash. Alas, Father Juliano never got anyone to back his wild ideas and he eventually abandoned his car-designing career.

It’s touching, actually, that Renault should pay tribute to the Aurora. Now, just make it go away.

-- Dan Neil