Ford recreates with AI the commercial he never made of his futuristic 1964 car

Ford used artificial intelligence to produce the commercial it never did. The automaker’s historical archive team created a 1960s-style advertising film for the Aurora, a concept presented in 1964, and released it on Artificial Intelligence Day, an unofficial commemorative date marked on July 16 in the United States.

The video simulates the campaign that American advertising at the time would have done if it had access to current technology. According to Ford, the material was built from archival photos, design documents and the original texts for the prototype.

A living room on wheels

The Aurora debuted at the 1964 New York World’s Fair—the same event at which the Mustang was introduced—and never intended to make it to the assembly line. It was a “dream car”, in Ford’s own definition, created when the brand had fallen to third place in station wagon sales in the United States, behind General Motors and Chrysler. Gene Bordinat, then vice president of style, described it as “a rolling laboratory of new ideas in style and engineering.” The brochure distributed at the event listed 23 new solutions.

With a length of 5,766 m and a wheelbase of 3,327 m, the model was larger than the current Expedition MAX, Ford’s largest SUV, which is 5,631 m and has a practically identical wheelbase. The space was divided into three environments: the command post, a central hall with a curved L-shaped sofa, swivel chair, TV, radio, sound recorder and a cabinet with refrigerator and cabinet, and the children’s compartment, in the back.

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The latter was where the trunk would be, with a seat facing backwards and access by a split lid whose lower half served as a carpeted step. An electrically operated glass partition isolated the noise, and the AM/FM radio in the area acted as an intercom with the parents. The space also had its own thermostat and a compartment for toys.

What became reality

Part of Aurora’s solutions reached production decades later. The dashboard had a map that indicated the car’s position in real time, anticipating by about 30 years the on-board navigation of a series Ford. There was zoned climate control, entertainment for rear passengers, and a polarized sunroof that went from transparent to opaque at the touch of a button. In place of the steering wheel, an assisted bar required a half-turn from one end to the other — a solution that has only reappeared in recent Tesla models. Cruise control and variable ratio steering also took off.

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Other ideas remained in the prototype. The front had 12 sealed headlights of 2.5 cm in diameter instead of the conventional two or four, and blue electroluminescent friezes ran along the sides serving as position lights. The car was even considered by the production of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, which ended up giving up. In 1969, Ford would still make an Aurora II, more restrained, on the basis of the LTD Country Squire station wagon.