The Chrysler Turbine Car is an automobile powered by a turbine engine which was produced by Chrysler from 1962 to 1964. Its body was made by the Italian design studio Ghia, and Chrysler completed its assembly in Detroit. The Chrysler turbine engine program that produced the Turbine Car began during the late 1930s, and created multiple prototypes that successfully completed numerous long-distance trips in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The A-831 engines that powered the Ghia-designed Turbine Car could operate on many more fuels, required less maintenance, and lasted longer than conventional piston engines, although they were much more expensive to produce. A total of 55 cars were built: five prototypes and a limited run of 50 cars for a public user program. The car's design was created by Elwood Engel and the Chrysler studios. A two-door hardtop coupe, it featured power brakes, power steering, and a TorqueFlite transmission, and was coated with a metallic, root beer-colored paint known as "turbine bronze".
After testing, Chrysler conducted a user program from September 1964 to January 1966 that involved 203 individual drivers in 133 different cities across the United States cumulatively driving more than one million miles (1.6 million km). The program helped the company determine a variety of problems with the cars, notably with their complicated starting procedure and relatively unimpressive acceleration. The experience also revealed key advantages of the turbine engines, including their remarkable durability, smooth operation, and relatively modest maintenance requirements, as well as additional complaints about their sub-par fuel economy and noise level.
After the conclusion of the user program in 1966, Chrysler reclaimed all of the cars and destroyed all but nine of them. Chrysler kept two cars, five are displayed at museums in the United States, and two are in private collections. Chrysler's turbine engine program ultimately ended in the mid-1970s, largely due to the ultimate failure of the engines to meet government emissions regulations and their relatively poor fuel economy.
Background
Chrysler began researching turbine engines during the late 1930s, primarily led by executive engineer George Huebner; Huebner was part of a group of engineers who began exploring the idea of powering a car with a turbine after World War II. Other members of the secretive Chrysler research team which worked on automotive turbines included fellow engineers Bud Mann and Sam B. Williams. The concept intrigued them, largely because turbine engines have fewer moving parts than their piston-powered counterparts and can run on a variety of fuels. According to historian Charles K. Hyde, by the mid-1950s Chrysler "led the way in terms of gas turbine research" (although General Motors and Rover also built operational turbine cars after World War II).
After improving their turbine design, most notably by engineering a regenerator to resolve an issue with heat exchange, the Chrysler team's efforts reached early maturity when they mated a turbine to an otherwise-stock 1954 Plymouth Belvedere. Heating and cooling and emissions and exhaust were among the principal engineering challenges which faced the turbine engine. Chrysler tested the Belvedere, claiming that its turbine engine contained 20 percent fewer parts and weighed 200 pounds (91Â kg) less than comparable, conventional piston engines. On June 16, 1954, the company publicly unveiled the turbine-powered Belvedere at its Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, in front of over 500 reporters.
Chrysler unveiled its next turbine car, a 1956 Plymouth, on March 23, 1956; Huebner drove it 3,020 miles (4,860Â km) on a four-day trip from New York City to Los Angeles. Although the car was shadowed by a 14-person convoy of mechanics with fuel and spare parts, it only required two minor repairs on the trip (neither of which were engine-related). The coast-to-coast journey's success led Chrysler to double the size of its turbine program and move it from Highland Park, Michigan, to a larger facility on Greenfield Road in Detroit.
The program began generating a number of patent applications in 1957, due largely to the contributions of metallurgist Amedee Roy and engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi. The next iteration of the Chrysler turbine engine (the second-generation engine) was placed into a 1959 Plymouth, which averaged 19.4 miles per US gallon (12.1 L/100 km; 23.3 mpgâ€'imp) on a trip from Detroit to Woodbridge, New Jersey. This mileage was substantially higher than the 13 mpgâ€'US (18 L/100 km; 16 mpgâ€'imp) achieved with the first-generation turbine on the 1956 New York-to-Los Angeles journey.
After Chrysler named former accountant Lynn Townsend its new president in 1961, the company unveiled its next, third-generation turbine engine on February 28; the CR2A was the first Chrysler turbine engine to be officially named. Unlike its more-experimental predecessors, the CR2A was designed with an eye on costs and production methods. While the engine was under development in May 1960, Huebner said that it would serve as its own torque converter, generate 140 horsepower (100 kW), have an acceleration lag of 1.5 seconds (compared with nine seconds for its predecessor), and weigh 450 lb (200 kg)â€"150 lb (68 kg) less than a comparably sized piston engine.
Third-generation turbines were mated to a variety of vehicles, including a 2.5-ton 1960 Dodge truck and the Chrysler Turboflite concept car. Refined CR2A turbines were installed into a 1962 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Fury; the Dart was driven from New York City to Los Angeles in December 1961, and the Fury completed a journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco in January 1962. After Huebner arrived in Los Angeles with the Dart, he spent two hours giving journalists rides in the turbine-powered car.
Chrysler had barnstormed its fleet of turbine cars to dealers across North America, Europe and Mexico by February 1962, visiting 90 cities, giving rides to almost 14,000 people, and being seen by millions more. The third-generation turbine program ended at the 1962 Chicago Auto Show that month, where the company displayed its turbine-powered fleet. Shortly before the show Chrysler announced an upcoming fourth-generation turbine engine it planned to install in a limited run of 50â€"75 cars which would be loaned to the public at no cost in late 1963, a decision largely due to enthusiastic public response to the barnstorming tour.
Engine
The Chrysler Turbine Car is powered by the A-831, Chrysler's fourth-generation turbine engine. The most notable difference from its predecessor, the CR2A, was its use of twin regenerators (one mounted on either side of the gasifier) instead of a single top cover-mounted heat exchanger. This design helped the A-831 trim 40 pounds (18Â kg) from the CR2A's weight, reducing it to a relatively-light 410 pounds (190Â kg). Huebner described the turbine as similar to a jet engine, noting that it had only one spark plug and about 80 percent fewer parts than a typical automotive piston engine. Due to their construction, the engines did not require antifreeze, a cooling system, a radiator, bearings, connecting rods, or crankshafts.
The A-831 could operate on diesel fuel, unleaded gasoline, kerosene, and JP-4 jet fuel; however, leaded gasoline damaged it. According to Chrysler, it could burn a variety of unusual fuels ranging from furnace oil and perfume to peanut and soybean oils. Mexican president Adolfo López Mateos ran one of the cars on tequila after Chrysler engineers confirmed that it would do so.
The engine produced 130 brake horsepower (97 kW) at 36,000 revolutions per minute (rpm), 425 pound-feet (576 N⋅m) of torque, and idled between 18,000 and 22,000 rpm. At idle, its exhaust did not exceed 180 °F (82 °C). When driven at 120 mph (190 km/h), the turbine ran at its maximum of 60,000 rpm. The A-831's compressor had a pressure ratio of 4:1 and an efficiency of 80 percent; its combustor operated at 95 percent efficiency.
Compared to conventional piston engines, turbine engines generally require less maintenance, last longer, and start more easily in cold conditions; the A-831 started properly at temperatures as low as âˆ'20 °F (âˆ'29 °C). The first car to receive an A-381 was a Plymouth Fury. In this Ghia-built turbine car, the engine had a 0-to-60 mph (97 km/h) time of about 12 seconds. Due to the exotic materials and strict tolerances needed to build the engines and the investment casting method with which they were made, the A-831s were very expensive to produce; Chrysler never disclosed their actual cost.
Design
The Turbine Car was designed in the Chrysler studios under the direction of Elwood Engel, who had worked for the Ford Motor Company before moving to Chrysler. Due to its resemblance to the Engel-designed Ford Thunderbird, the car is occasionally called the "Englebird". According to Huebner, the design was intended to compete with the Chevrolet Corvette in addition to the Thunderbird.
The car's bodies were handmade by Italian design studio Ghia, which had built a number of concept cars for Chrysler (including an Imperial limousine and the Norseman). The mostly completed Turbine Car bodies, which were assembled, painted, trimmed, and upholstered by Ghia in Italy, were shipped to Chrysler's Greenfield Road turbine facility in Detroit for final assembly; this consisted of installing the turbine engines, TorqueFlite transmissions, electrical wiring, and components such as radios and heaters. Building an individual car may have cost as much as $50,000 (equivalent to $395,000 in 2017) or $55,000 (equivalent to $434,000 in 2017); Virgil Exner, Jr., estimates that the bodies themselves cost about $20,000 (equivalent to $158,000 in 2017), although Chrysler never revealed the cost of each turbine engine.
The first five cars were completed in early 1962 as prototypes used for troubleshooting; each was slightly different from the others, varying in exterior color, interior upholstery, and roof material. Early issues discovered from the prototypes included sluggish acceleration (attributed in part to the relatively heavy hand-built bodies) and vibration, ultimately determined to be caused by the tire treads and noticeable due to the unusual smoothness of the turbine engine.
A total of 50 identical Turbine Cars were built between October 1963 and October 1964. They were all two-door hardtop coupes, with air-over-oil power brakes and power steering. The cars had independent front suspension with a coil spring at each front wheel, eschewing Chrysler's contemporary-standard independent front longitudinal torsion bar system (although their rear suspension utilized off-the-shelf leaf springs). All four wheels were equipped with power-assisted drum brakes.
The car body is finished in a metallic, root beer-colored paint known as "turbine bronze". Its headlights, deeply-recessed taillights, turn signals, and pod-shaped backup lights are mounted in chrome bezels. The turbine-inspired style carries through to the center console design of the interior, which has bronze-colored leather upholstery, deep-pile bronze carpet, and brushed aluminum accents. The cars have black vinyl hardtop roofs, leather-upholstered bucket seats, and whitewall tires.
The Turbine Car's dashboard is dominated by three large gauges: a speedometer, a tachometer, and pyrometer, the latter monitoring the temperature of the turbine inlet (the engine's hottest component). Its appearance is mostly stock, although the tachometer and pyrometer display abnormally high readings compared to piston-engine cars: 46,000 rpm and 1,700 °F (930 °C), respectively. All 55 turbine cars had identical ignition keys.
User program
Two of the cars gave rides to visitors at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and another went on a worldwide tour; 50 were lent to the general public as part of a user program. The cars were given to drivers for a three-month period at no charge, aside from fuel costs; participants also gave Chrysler in-depth interviews within two weeks of returning their cars. During the user program, which ran from September 1964 to January 1966, the cars' operational downtime was four percent early in the program and was reduced to one percent by its conclusion.
The user program helped identify a variety of problems with the cars, including starter malfunction at high altitudes, difficulty in mastering the unusual eight-step starting procedure (which, for some users, resulted in engine damage), and the cars' relatively unimpressive acceleration. Nonetheless, the turbine engines were remarkably durable in comparison to contemporary piston engines. The most-cited advantages of the turbine engine, according to the participants' interviews, were its smooth and vibration-free operation, reduced maintenance requirements, and ease of starting in different conditions; the most-common complaints concerned its slow acceleration, sub-par fuel economy, and relatively high noise level. Investigating the latter complaint, Chrysler found that the distinctive sound of the car's turbine (reminiscent of a jet engine) was positively received by about 60 percent of those involved in the user program and disliked by about 20 percent of their fellow users.
The cars had conspicuous warning labels cautioning drivers to avoid using leaded gasoline; although the turbine engine could run on it, the lead additive left debilitating deposits in it. The only fuel which Chrysler recommended not be used, it was by far the easiest to obtain during the user program. Fuels commonly used by those participating in the user program included diesel and home heating oil.
More than 1 million miles (1.6 million km) were accumulated in testing by the 50 cars given to the public, which were driven by 203 users before the program ended in January 1966. The users lived in 133 cities in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C.; 180 were male and 23 were female, their ages ranged from 21 to 70, and 60 percent were Chrysler owners.
Legacy
In April 1966, product planning and development vice president Harry E. Chesebrough noted that the 50 test cars would be taken off the road regardless of whether the Chrysler Turbine Car went into production. After Chrysler finished the user program and other public displays of the cars, 46 of them were destroyed. Forty-five of the cars were burned and crushed at a scrapyard south of Detroit, and the other was destroyed at Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds. Although a widely circulated explanation was that the cars were destroyed to avoid a substantial tariff on the imported Ghia bodies, author Steve Lehto notes that this has been "largely discredited". The destruction of the cars was in line with the automobile industry's practice of not selling non-production or prototype cars to the public; according to Lehto, it was influenced by Chrysler's public relations concerns: the potential difficulty of keeping the cars running and fears that owners would replace the turbine powerplants with piston engines. A Chrysler executive was quoted in Look: "Our main objective is research, and we did not want turbines turning up on used-car lots." A similar practice was later used by General Motors with its EV1, when it terminated the program and destroyed most of the cars in 2003.
Chrysler's development of turbine engines continued from the late 1960s into the 1970s, resulting in the creation of fifth- and sixth-generation engines. Despite promising early results and a $6.4 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency, the turbines ultimately failed to meet government emissions regulations and had relatively poor fuel economy. According to Charles K. Hyde, the company's effort to enlarge and diversify its turbine program was unsuccessful and spread its "already-thin executive talent pool even thinner". An October 1967 Department of Commerce report concluded that the turbine engine was "unsuited to automobiles". Development of automotive turbines continued, in part because turbine exhaust contains fewer unburned hydrocarbons and lower concentrations of other pollutants. In March 1971, Sam Williams' Williams Research Corporation continued developing a turbine engine with funding from the National Air Pollution Control Administration. Chrysler's turbine engine development continued through the mid-1970s, when (according to former company powertrain engineer Chris Theodore) it discontinued the program because it could not attain enough fuel economy. One Chrysler Turbine Car, painted white with blue racing stripes (the only car not painted bronze), appeared in the 1964 film The Lively Set.
Only nine Chrysler Turbine Cars have survived. Two are kept by Chrysler (of three initially retained by the company); five are on display at museums around the United States, and two were acquired by private collectors. Chrysler has displayed one of its cars at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Michigan; the five cars on museum display were donated to the Detroit Historical Museum, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Missouri, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The Detroit Historical Museum lent its car, which had been in warehouse storage, to the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan, in 2005. All the cars donated to museums had their fan assemblies removed to render their engines inoperable, although the car owned by the Museum of Transportation was restored and returned to operating condition in the 1980s (allowing it to appear at car shows).
Two Chrysler Turbine Cars have been acquired by private collectors. One, owned by Frank Kleptz of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was originally donated to the former Harrah Collection in Reno, Nevada, before being purchased by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and sold to Kleptz. The second is owned by comedian and television host Jay Leno, who in 2009 purchased one of the three Turbine Cars originally retained by Chrysler. Leno's car was featured in the BBC television show James May's Cars of the People. Both privately owned Chrysler Turbine Cars are operational.
Locations of surviving cars
- #991211: Museum of Transportation, Kirkwood, Missouri
- #991225: Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, Michigan (loaned to the Gilmore Car Museum, Hickory Corners, Michigan)
- #991230: Walter P. Chrysler Museum, Auburn Hills, Michigan
- #991231: Frank Kleptz' private collection in Indiana
- #991234: Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan
- #991242: Jay Leno's private collection in California (formerly at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, Auburn Hills, Michigan)
- #991244: Petersen Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, California
- #991245: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
- #991247: Walter P. Chrysler Museum, Auburn Hills, Michigan
See also
Other gas-turbine concept cars
- Fiat Turbina
- General Motors Firebird
- Renault Étoile Filante
- Rover-BRM
References
Sources
External links
- TurbineCar.com
- 1963 Chrysler Turbine: Ultimate Edition - Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube
- A film clip featuring the 1956 Chrysler turbine test car cross-country trip is available at the Internet Archive