1990 CADILLAC AURORA CONCEPT APPEARS DESTINED FOR THE CRUSHER
- Spy photos show the 1990 Cadillac Aurora concept sitting in a scrapyard ready to be crushed.
- The Aurora debuted at the 1990 Chicago auto show and had a cameo in the 1993 film Demolition Man.
- General Motors appears to have given up on preserving this piece of history, which packed a 4.5-liter V-8 and all-wheel drive.
It's a well-worn tale: a movie star's time in the limelight quickly passes and they fade into obscurity, winding up destitute and forgotten. This same story occurs in the automotive world, where many concept cars go from gleaming on auto show stands to slowly deteriorating in a warehouse, only to be unceremoniously crushed. Now, spy photos show that fate may be befalling yet another movie star, the 1990 Cadillac Aurora concept. Okay, "star" is an exaggeration, but this concept car did grace the silver screen in 1993's Demolition Man.
A Blast from the Past
The Aurora was first shown at the 1990 Chicago auto show, and underneath its rounded bodywork lay a 200-hp 4.5-liter V-8 from the Allanté mated to a four-speed automatic and all-wheel drive. It was supposedly built on a frame donated from the de Ville, but it shifted the engine 90 degrees to make it longitudinally oriented.
After the auto show circuit, the Aurora got to shine in Demolition Man, a futuristic, dystopian cop thriller staring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock. The Aurora appears in the background of a city scene to show viewers a vision of the future of traffic. The movie is littered with GM concepts from the late 1980s and early '90s, such as the 1985 Buick Wildcat sports car, 1989 Cadillac Solitaire coupe, 1991 Corvette Sting Ray III, 1989 Oldsmobile Aerotech II wagon, and 1988 Pontiac Banshee. The unorthodox 1992 GM Ultralite also played a sizable role, and the even-stranger GM Lean Machine three-wheeler gets driven by Snipes.
While the Cadillac concept never made it, the Aurora name was gifted to Oldsmobile for the full-size Aurora sedan, which arrived in 1995 with a passing resemblance to the concept. The Cadillac quickly got forgotten, and now it looks like General Motors has decided to ditch this piece of history. Our spy photographer spotted it in a lot that is typically used for cars that are due to be demolished.
The Aurora concept is in a sorry state, with an array of dents, scratches, and scrapes, and it's parked metal-to-metal with a Buick LaCrosse. While the crushed remains of the Aurora haven't yet been spotted, this is probably the last time we will see the Aurora concept in one piece. It wasn't the most significant concept vehicle, but it's always interesting to see what the future looked like to past generations, making it a shame to see it get destroyed. Miracles can happen—like when collector Joe Bortz saved several GM Motorama show cars from a Detroit-area scrapyard—but the Aurora concept's time in the spotlight appears over.
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