Eos, or Aurora if you prefer the Roman name, is the goddess of the dawn. She is the divinely inbred daughter of Hyperion (god of light and father of the dawn), and his sister/wife, Thea (goddess of sight) -names you may remember from the previous posting about Saturn, as they were in fact, Saturn‘s siblings. Her siblings include Helios (the sun) and Selene (the moon).
Let’s take a moment to go over our machinery before we delve into the goddess aspect of these cars, shall we?
We’ll start with the VW Eos. I spotted this one while driving home from the car wash the other day and followed it long enough to get some pictures with my dash cam. Sorry I don't have better shots, but I think I freaked out the lady driving this vehicle while I was trying to get pictures of her car... Anyway, Eoses (not sure if that's the right way to pluralize the name) are still being made today, with their model years starting back in 2006. They’re a rather cutesy-pooh little retractable hard top coupe that VW offers to fill the void that was left when they did away with their Golf Cabriolet back in 1995.
I’ve never seen a man driving an Eos, and much as I don’t really like to assign gender specifics to who should be buying a certain car, I’m going to have to just suck it up and say, this is a chick car. Lest you think she’s a cheap date, the folks at V-Dub have a little sticker shock for you. The base MSRP on a new Eos starts at $35,195 for their bottom rung Komfort trim level. For that amount, you get a 2.0L turbocharged dual overhead cam 4 cylinder engine with 200 HP, 207 lb-ft of torque, and a 6 speed automatic transmission with 17” rims to roll around town all cute-like. Step up a level to the Sport trim, and you’re looking at a base MSRP of $37,925 which gets you 18” rims, a lowered and sport tuned suspension, and the same engine. Top of the line is the Executive trim level with a starting MSRP of $41,695 which gets you 18” rims, a navigation system, upgraded audio components, leather interior, a rearview camera, and 4Motion, which is VW’s all wheel drive system -same 4 cylinder engine, though.
Whether you are enamored of its cuteness or not, if you ask me, I’d say there are a lot of other cars I’d spend $35,000-41,000 on before I’d buy an Eos, but that’s just me.
On to the Oldsmobile Aurora, offered in model years 1995-2003. The ones I have photos of are late 1990’s models and are sitting at a used car lot priced around $3,000. Oldsmobile has gone the way of Saturn, in that GM threw in the towel on the brand some time ago. It made sense, because Oldsmobile and Buick had pretty much the same buyer demographic and reputation, so one of the twins had to go and it just came down to numbers.
Lest you think poorly of it, the Olds Aurora wasn't a bad car, and it didn't deserve to get scrapped along with its brand. In fact, Aurora’s were solidly built mid range luxury sedans that had fantastic safety ratings and quality fit and finish. The styling of the Aurora was a bit space aged, with slicked down contours and frameless windows -it was a departure from Oldsmobile’s typical offerings, but arrived just a bit too late in the game to really turn around the brand name. They were always offered with a 4.0L V8 that put out 250 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque, but in their later years of production, could also be had with a 3.5L V6 that had 215 HP and 234 lb-ft of torque. Both engines were derived from GM’s Cadillac division’s Northstar engine -and we’ll circle back around to that point later.
You might be thinking that aside from the whole inbreeding thing, having a car named after a goddess of the dawn doesn’t sound so bad. Better rethink that. Aurora/Eos had some problems, many of which stemmed from a curse that the goddess Aphrodite put on her after catching Aurora/Eos messing around with her man, Ares. You may recall Aphrodite from the Saturn post as being the divine product of the foamy froth that the seas produced after Saturn chucked his father Uranus’ severed genitalia into the ocean. So, just as Olsmobile is related to Saturn under the GM family name, Aphrodite is related to Aurora/Eos under the crazy Mount Olympus family tree. Back to the curse, though… Aphrodite cursed Aurora/Eos with insatiable nymphomania. Aurora/Eos, operating under the influence of this curse, made it a habit of going around abducting attractive men and spiriting them away to Mount Olympus’ version of a seedy pay by the hour motel to have her way with them.
Every now and then, Aurora/Eos would fall in love with one of her objects of desire. She fell particularly hard for a guy named Tithonus. She liked him so much, she decided he was a keeper. Only problem was, Tithonus was a mortal and would age and die even as Aurora/Eos stayed young and lovely, albeit sex-crazed, forever. To solve this dilemma, Aurora/Eos begged Zeus to grant immortality to Tithonus, which he did. It would seem that solved the problem, but actually, it created a new one. Aurora/Eos forgot to specify that she wanted Tithonus not to age during the course of his immortality. So, the poor guy grew old and shriveled, losing his mind to dementia over time, which left him rambling on with babbling nonsense. He wasn’t much good in the sack at this point either, so there wasn’t a whole lot that Aurora/Eos could do with poor, old Tithonus. She was still fond of the guy and felt bad that the other gods looked at him all funny when he babbled, so she turned him into a grasshopper (some say a cicada) so that nobody would judge him when he carried on and on with his gibberish.
That unfortunate business with Tithonus would have been bad enough, but Aurora/Eos had more problems on top of that. As an insatiable sex addict, she managed to get around quite a bit, and wasn’t a big believer in birth control, either. Her favorite kids, fathered by her lover-turned-insect resulted in some offspring who didn’t fare so well in spite of -or perhaps because of- their divine family tree. Aurora/Eos and Tithonus had two sons together, Memnon and Emathion. Memnon was killed by Achilles in battle, and Emathion was dispatched to the underworld at the hands of Demigod and Zeus’ son, Hercules. It is said that the morning dew is actually Aurora/Eos’ tears fallen to earth in mourning for all that she has lost.
….and here is where we bring it back around to the Oldsmobile Aurora. Remember those Cadillac Northstar engine derivatives that power the Aurora? Well, the Northstar is the same as Polaris (, which is part of the little dipper constellation, better known in ancient times as the tail end of Ursa Minor. The stars that make up Ursa Minor, or the baby bear (that happens to have a long, dog-like tail -which I think might make it more of a wombat or something) are representative of the Hesperides, or the nymph daughters of Atlas. How this relates back to the Olsmobile Aurora is via Hercules, who had to deal with the Hesperides in order to pluck 3 golden apples from the tree of Hesperides (which was also guarded by a 100-headed monster known as Ladon) as part of his trials. Hercules is, as mentioned before, the same guy who killed Aurora/Eos’ son, Emathion.
So, there you have it, VW’s chick car Eos and Olds’s dead in the water but once pretty darn good Aurora: both named after a goddess with nymphomania and a tragic love life and even more tragic offspring. I don’t know how sales of the VW Eos are going, but at that price point, I can’t imagine the name plate will be around too much longer, and the Olds is already gone. It would seem that naming a car for an ancient deity is a sure way to ensure the whole works goes down the tubes.
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