The Chrysler Turbine Car: Engineering a Revolution | Full Documentary

Overseas, if you look at automobile history in Detroit, there seems to be a straight line of automobiles that evolved over time and the

turbine

automobile was just a gigantic departure from the norm: the first new automobile power plant in more than 50 years. here was a car that had a totally new type of powertrain that no one had tried before. The whole concept of a turbocharged gasoline card was pretty radical. I mean the warranty. The tremendous potential of the

turbine

opens the possibility of an exciting new chapter in motorsport. and gives the car a jump start on the jet page if you've heard one run there's no doubt something different is going on in that car it sounds like the one from the future again.

I always thought it was the coolest post-war car. The styling was fantastic, the body was built by craftsmen in Italy, but the

engineering

that went into it is just as beautiful. A group of committed engineers were able to achieve something that is almost unattainable. There has never been another car like it. The turbine program was bold. it was bold Chrysler said we think we can really make a product here that we can sell to consumers sell more cars get a big chunk of the car market that's what it was all about the highlight of the show was the fleet of these cars that they put on the road they lent the public the most unusual consumer testing program ever launched in the auto industry they chose 203 families they sent the cars think about it it was crazy for Chrysler to do this people are driving experimental cars on the road it turned out to be It will be one of the biggest marketing campaigns in automobile history.

The intense public interest being put into modeling came at a time when the idea of ​​a car for the common man had not yet reached much of the Earth and here were the Americans. cars powered by five cigarette lighters, you know, I mean crazy, everything about the turbine car is great, everything that stood up to the naysayers, you know, we'll never have a car with a turban, well , we have had one and it still exists. 55 manufactured, only nine left, it has become an icon in the automotive world, it is a symbol of excellence in

engineering

and also the future of what could be, thanks here is the precise language of the engineer, it is called a jet propulsion gas turbine. and I'm the jet engine the idea of ​​a turbine engine is actually very simple a turbine is a very advanced use of one of man's oldest means of creating energy to run well a pinwheel I mean, you get back to a pinwheel and you blow it and it turns out you know, that's what a turbo does: it blows air through a rotor with wings, then you can do a lot of things with that rotor, a turbine engine, basically, it's you have a tube with fan blades inside, air enters one end and enters the combustion chamber, creating fire and heat that shoots out the back passing another set of fan blades.

These fan blades are on a shaft connected to the first set of fan blades. It makes the ones in the front rotate and suck in more air. and creates constant combustion by expelling air out the back if you look at how quickly aircraft design accelerated during World War I or World War II, it seems that much of the technology is driven by military applications, People want to find out what is the best, the fastest or the strongest. and also, usually, because there's an unlimited budget behind those jet-powered military planes, they started showing up right at the end of World War II, you'd see them fly or you'd hear them, they've made it through any kind of noise and they could leave.

I mean they were much faster than the propeller. This is the jet turban. The power that propels today's fighters through the sonic barrier. You get a much smaller, lighter engine that makes much more power. That's what a jet engine could do in aviation. That was a terribly attractive feature, they had completely taken over high performance military aircraft and were starting to take over the commercial aircraft business at that time around Sonic Speed, but within one of the most impressive discoveries there is no feeling of movement at all. New concept in air transportation Chrysler turbine development really began in the late 1930s and was greatly accelerated during World War II was the development of a turboprop engine was a Navy contract the a86 was the aircraft program The gas turbine engine was successful but by then the war had ended but the turbine itself had sparked interest.

Some of the people who worked on that show naturally thought we worked at a car company. Could we take that engine and instead of spinning a propeller, spin a driveshaft, wouldn't that be anything more insurmountable than us? We're done with commercial engines, just no one ever has. Some competitive automotive engineers see no practical future for the turbine engine, but Chrysler Corporation engineers could see something worth striving for. You have to think about what was happening in the country in the '50s and '60s. Realizing American greed, the envy of the entire world, everything was a little optimistic because we had come out of this horrible World War and we were heading into a time of economic prosperity only for leaders, right?

We're the best, you know, that was it. our our role in today's world lead Sputnik you are the space runner in America the most difficult step into outer space you had plane rides getting to Vogue the whole jet age thing just isn't a corner many times the styles and fashions are shaped by the technology of the time and vice versa, we all know that the car with fins is from the 50s. We started with the Cadillac Harley Earl had copied the look of the P-38 with the tail fins, very obvious large fins in the back of the car and then Chrysler got into huge models, but that was it.

I think it's a reflection of that sense of streamlined style. It is no wonder that, in the midst of so much promise of adventure, the new generation must grain its next Chi wood until it becomes the silver grain that will mark tomorrow, many people began to believe. Since technology was advancing much faster than it had previously been, everyone thought that one day in the future we will have flying cars with jetpacks, so it didn't seem so out of place for someone to say, by the way, we can make jet packs. reaction. Cars that put the same smooth power in family cars has long been an engineering dream, but the challenge for the automotive engineer is much more difficult.

They made a comparison of the requirements of jet engines and automotive turbines and nothing could have been further away. I mean, jet engines guzzle fuel. like a line in a herd of gazelles, the fault is that the breath is white-hot gas fed by drops of liquid fuel, what is that gallon? They don't idle very well and simply don't bill the cars, so it meant a complete rethink of the turbine. concept, an airplane with a jet engine is powered simply by hot air coming out the back in an automotive environment, it is very different, there are actually two main steps to power the automotive gas turbine engine, the gas turbine The first stage does nothing more than activate the compressor. wheel and whatever accessories there are like generator and oil pump behind that is the second stage turbine which also runs at high speed 40 50 000 and obviously that is too high for a rear wheel axle so there is about a set of ten to one reduction gears that drives the car, the turbine would be considered the cutting edge, the very height of a car and that's the way most people see it.

Wow, this is a jet car, although it wasn't actually a jet car. Jet engines just took all that gasoline and exploded. At the rear we use it in a mechanical sense to drive the wheels. There was logic in it. I mean, the engine has many attractive features that, if they could be adapted to the car's engine, would make them very popular, the term Urbano. The engine looks different on the outside because it is definitely different on the inside. The parts inside the turbine rotate while the parts inside a piston engine oscillate back and forth. They shake, vibrate, make noise.

Something that spins can be smoother. I have an engine unlike any other engine in a car that emits absolutely no vibration, you feel less smoothness that you don't feel in a car with a piston engine and fewer moving parts there were no pistons, no crankshaft, no rod, no drivetrain. valves. the turbine engine is like a quarter of the parts, it was about 200 pounds lighter than a standard combustion engine, that's the interesting part, low maintenance, one spark plug, maybe once every 50,000 miles, put in a spark plug new, another, but never change the oil. It's burning. runs on unleaded petrol, jp4, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel, home heating oil, v05, hairspray, we have heard stories of one that was in France that ran on Chanel Number Five perfume.

I went to Dothan, Alabama, for the Peanut Festival and we drove the vehicle with peanuts. oil and it smelled like a Chinese restaurant if people were amazed in South Africa they wouldn't believe us when we said this car would run on cognac so we tried it and it worked of course this is all interesting but why would you need to do it? I mean, what was cheaper than gas when the car came out? In many places, gas cost 19 cents per gallon. The multi-fuel aspect was something that people later said, "My God, we could have taken advantage of that, but people didn't." I'm still not thinking about the cost of gasoline, the most exciting cars in the world that run on any pure engine, now other car companies are playing with the technology and turbines were not invented by Chrysler, in fact the English did it first , the Rover had a gas turbine the first. car in the world powered by our gas turbine engine, a speed of 30 kilometers per hour was easily achieved in these tests.

Chrysler was the company that really decided to make the big investment for years and years. Chrysler was known as the engineering company. Up to 1,500 different research tests are conducted at the same time in Chrysler Corporation laboratories, so you'll have a more reliable and efficient vehicle. It started with Mr. Chrysler, he was the one who really emphasized that we should come up with innovations every year. Several of the inventions that are common in automobiles were started at Chrysler because they were in keeping with the strange idea that the company came out with downdraft carburetors with power steering cruise control to give these engineers free rein to really develop and innovate. , something that was quite notable in At that time, in Detroit, everything that was done in this city between companies was on a competitive basis, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, all the other manufacturers had tournament programs.

General Motors made a couple, four made a couple when it came to turbine engines, there was definitely a superiority. The Big Red is an experimental gas turbine-powered super truck for the 1970s. We closely followed everything that was published about our competitors' activities and some of the things they did were pretty cool. It was a fraternity of gas turbans that we all had. together whenever the opportunity presented itself and although we were careful not to divulge anything that was secret, we still talked a lot, drank some beer and a milestone and automotive engineering is marked by the completion of General Motors Firebird II.

Joe Modis has the Firebirds that looked like a land plane there is no way they are going to build this this is actually just a fantasy hey do you want some ice cream or a cold drink orange juice please amazing beautiful vehicles but They were not. He intended to start production from the beginning. Chrysler focused on a high production car. Let's start working on automotive turbines, not as show cars but as cars we can actually sell to people. We foresaw a bright future for this turban car and we had a guy like George Hubner to promote it.

George Hubner was the research director of the corporation and he was a believer, a high-tech type of person, he was very persuasive and also an enormously capable engineer, so he was a good match, he wasn't someone to root for. him for a few minutes and sent him in front of the cameras. He knew what he was doing and was always there as part of the discussion, asking good questions and getting answers. He had a team under him working on these cars and building the cars, designing the cars. and he had to go upa level to get people above him to authorize expenditures and so on, was really compelling, specifically internally, he sold it to the corporate hierarchy if any individual could take credit for the Chrysler turbine program that was going as in The extent to which it did so would have been blamed on George Hubner, executive research engineer, who literally lived with the turbine engine from concept to completion; it probably wouldn't even have been released without it.

Sam Williams could have convinced someone to let him shoehorn the engine into a car and they probably would have said okay, that's nice. Sam get back to work and build us something else. Sam was kind of the initial spark, he was one of the guys who said, don't worry about the problems with the jet engine airplane, that's a different animal than us. "I'm going to make this work," he was concentrating on his efforts and his Visions on miniaturization, making things small, it's a machine like anything else, you just shrink it down, break the slide rules and start doing math and make it smaller.

What is notable is that Dr. Williams is blind, so he couldn't see all the things he was doing in his head. He had to imagine that we had people like Williams and Chapman and several others who were incredibly good engineers. They really started with a blank sheet of paper. was to make an engine that was so efficient, so economical and so clean that everyone would want one, of course, that is also everyone's ambition. You know, the challenge was really the materials used in the motor and the cost of the fan blades. are made becomes a big problem metals that you know you are peopleIn the automotive world they talk about things like Channel or titanium, but exotic metals are expensive.

Thanks to Chrysler's metallurgical research, new materials were developed containing abundant and relatively inexpensive elements that could be manufactured by conventional methods and still have excellent resistance to heat and oxidation even at high temperatures. extreme temperatures developed an alloy that wasn't good enough for airplanes but was good enough for automotive use, it was still expensive that's the kind of thing that made the program difficult but fascinating things we'd never thought about before, new problems that solve and we were concerned One hundred percent, what can we do to make it more powerful and more efficient? One of the things that Chrysler came up with early on was the regenerator concept and the regenerator recycles the heat, which is more efficient because it saves energy as the exhaust leaves the car, passes by the side of the regenerator, and then As the regenerator spins around, the intake air goes through the regenerator and picks up the heat that just entered the regenerator at the back and so recycles the heat from the exhaust, so that does two things: it increases the intake temperature and it reduces the exhaust temperature.

Every bit of heat that you can recover with the regenerator was fuel that you didn't have to put in the combustion chamber, you absolutely had to have some type of device like that to keep all the heat in by just blowing out the exhaust the big fear everyone had was the escape that, oh, don't stay behind it. I mean, there were stories that if you drove under the grass and set the grass on fire, I I can't tell you how many people would say that melting the car behind them not exactly the exhaust was a little bit colder than the normal exhaust now the Piston Edge the regenerator was the great step forward between a jet engine and a car engine the other major problem initially at least was noise an airplane is very loud when I turn it on stay away his deep voice will rise to the screeches of a thousand demons some of the first turbans ate them under the ear yourself we spent a lot of effort working on reducing that noise through different designs of turbine wheel blades and ducts etc., they reduced it to a tolerable level.

It happened relatively quickly from World War II, nine years later they actually had a working turbine in the 1954 Plymouth, the first Plymouth built in America. gas turbine engine in a car on production line for the first time they demonstrated the turbine in front of the media and their jaws dropped they had no idea really what it sounded like it was loud and a little slow it was a kick the first cars We weren't even close to being a production car, that's for sure, but the engines were put in a production car and driven on the street, so that was the first step, we put it in a couple of show cars;

However, the idea was: can we make it practical? public roads, so let's put it on a '54 Plymouth and a '56 Plymouth, let's put them on real-world vehicles and give people an idea of ​​what we're trying to do. They didn't say, "Hey, let's take them to car shows and show them off." They took them cross-country, we'll take them to Los Angeles and when we get there, Mr. Hubner will take reporters who weren't expecting to see this and then he'll take them back. Those are public relations projects, you know? just so everyone was aware of it, even the hierarchy of the corporation, they stopped everywhere and gave press conferences and showed off the cars.

George Humer discovered that reporters were showing up in droves. He knew how to outwit his bosses. He addressed the audience directly. When we stopped for lunch in Springfield, Illinois, the owner called all of his friends and invited them to a special show. Suddenly, we presented this vehicle that sounds like the future they were hoping for and that was really behind the interests of the people, the entire country. idea that we were moving forward, Chrysler was really at the forefront, advertising got us the funds to continue working on this engine, we had money coming out of our ears for a while, a lot of people who were excited about the idea came to work. there, when I worked on this program, it was the most fun job I've ever had in my life, I surely died and went to heaven.

I think everyone who worked on a show became kind of a family, we played hard and we worked hard. and we were a kind of Skunk Works within Chrysler Corporation, very talented, very skilled, very competitive. Whenever there was a problem, everyone thought their idea was the best, but we managed to reach some central agreement, thanks to a little bit of everyone's input. a field of engineering that is what pushes you into the unknown initially in the 1950's the engineers were housed here in Highland Park once the program really began to prepare they moved to Dearborn Michigan in the Greenfield plan the Greenfield plant was just a turban team, those are the only people that worked there, we were very confident that this was going to be the car of the future in the early 1960s.

Mr. Huebner had a brilliant marketing idea, he had to go to them and say look, I want to do an experiment. Build a fleet of jet cars and lend them to the public. The goal of this unusual program was to test consumer and market reaction to turbine power and obtain service data and driver experience with turbine cars in a wide variety of geographic conditions by the way we will insure the cars. , drivers won't insure cars, Chrysler will insure cars, think about the liability of a large corporation lending experimental cars to strange families spread across the contiguous 48 states, that would never happen today, it was a different time than mine.

Mom would say it was a different time then, well the agreement we had to sign was a 14 inch long three column piece of paper, it's a one page contract, it doesn't exist in nature anymore, it basically said, "Yo, the user, I'm going to take this." Chrysler Chrysler's car is insuring it, but I will do my best to take care of it and if it breaks down I will do the following. I'll put gas in it. I'll lead you to the end of the program. I'll write it again on a page. It's easy to sell to the public if it sounds good.

Know. I mean, that's the one I wouldn't say hell. I would like to try a jet car. I mean, I would have in the past. Oh. That sounds great, I'd love to, I'd love to be involved, we wanted to sell an idea, we wanted to show you what Chrysler engineering can do, we're excited to launch the product and at the same time, we're figuring out what we're doing. You know, we're giving people a new type of driving technology. How will they treat or mistreat her? Yes, there was concern as with any new experiment, but most of us engineers are pretty sure it would be that way. be safe, interesting and drivable George convinced the powers that be that having a fleet account I said giving them to people to use would really be a wonderful promotion for Chrysler, you know how you could top that?

Chrysler said well if we do this we want people who recognize the cars Gea and Italia did all the car show work we had a relationship and it was natural for Geo to build the bodies in the early 1960s Elwood Engel came from Ford Motor Company as our lead designer, it really was his vision. which became the turbine cars of 1963-64 with our designers Charles Michigan was the guy who designed this car that Charles worked on Elwood Engel Elwood Engel had to approve everything now the general shape of the car which was a remade Thunderbird, it was Note that yes.

It looks like a T-Bird. He didn't know that the guy who had made the original Thunderbird had come to Chrysler at that time and this is one of the first projects he was in charge of. My first impression was that it is a very attractive car. and I thought it was perfect for what they were going to use them for, they chose a turbine bronze color that would stand out, it's not very loud but it's distinctive, so when you see that color on a car, it's a Chrysler turbine car, it's not typical. Your dream car is deliberately designed to have impressive current appeal and utility.

He had many signs of a turban. It looks like it's powered by more than just a gasoline engine, especially from the rear. It looked like the back of a fighter plane. It's quite imposing. That car has the most beautiful rear bumper of any car on the road, far from it, and that's just one element of the car, you know, there are a lot of other interesting things about the car, people see the taillights and they automatically think, oh, that's the exhaust, which looks like they would think it's jet powered and expect you to know. Flames in the back.

The biggest thing that people assumed was part of the jetpack, which was the center console, that tubular console that runs down the center. Oh, that has to be connecting something from the front to the back and no, you're going to look back and there's an ashtray there, they've got that turbine motif hidden everywhere on that car, the bar that holds the rearview mirror to the windshield. The hubcaps, the bezels around the headlights, they have cooling fins, they designed it to look space age, but it's not crazy, it's actually quite restrained for the late 50's early 60's, it has a sort of Blue Book worthy.

All vehicles were built by hand. in Italy they are all painted there and trimmed there, they are building very very slowly, one at a time, basically old world craftsmen, the bodies that came from Italy cost over 250,000 in today's money, so it was a big investment and that was actually included in the marketing budget to make this stand out. Vehicles from Italy were shipped directly to Greenfield for turbine engine installation. Thank you. Seven generations were created for the turbine, the one used in the Gear. Automobiles are the fourth generation. In each generation of engines, fuel consumption improved dramatically in all.

The original Power turbine had fixed nozzles that direct flow to the turbine blades, which limited us in terms of what we could do with the flexibility of the output. The biggest leap in Turbo technology was with the fourth generation. The variable geometry that this engine has. The repositionable nozzle essentially gives you an infinite selection of motors. Anything you like that improves efficiency. How do you make it work? It's not yet. Melting the pieces, the more efficient it was. This leads you here. A hydraulic actuator would reposition these nozzle veins depending on what it was doing. If you were to accelerate to the floor, they would go to the fixed position for maximum power.

I would hold his foot all the time. Coming off the throttle they would actually reverse the flow and try to push the hydraulic adjustment in the other direction to give you some braking with the engine and every place in between depending on the speed you were going and trying to go these nozzles would have a setting. That took quite a bit of work but gave us a big advantage in efficiency and versatility at part load. Additionally, the other engines had a large single regenerator on top. The fourth generation had dual regenerators. They placed the regenerators on each side, which created The mostefficient had a lower height so it could go into the lower engine compartment, as far as I know this is definitely the largest test vehicle build ever done.

If we had a body, there's nothing there but the body, they're all bolted to a big, big box, they came in pretty good shape and they created the thing and took it to the beginning of our little assembly line, then we had to converting it into a car, the line wasn't that long, we only got to about six stations or so. We would build it, test it and make all the engine adjustments that were relevant. We would test them on the Southfield Freeway and run them pretty quickly and then hand it off to the service crew.

They would take it away. They built. 55 of the Gia turbines, the first to arrive were the ones that ended up in the laboratory, the Lab Rats, a bronze era without a vinyl roof, one of them was white with a white interior with bronze inserts, there were actually only 47 which were being You let it be used because George Hubner had one that was his personal car and two cars were assigned to the New York World's Fair. You could get tickets like for a ride in an amusement park, you stood in line and they took you in the turbine car and they did a couple of laps around this track, they gave about 14,000 tours in two years and the people I've heard traveled hundreds of miles just to be able to see those cars on April 17, 1964.

I made my dad take me there, you know? We went and I had the car with the turban going around in a hole. For the love of God my father, what the hell how long do I look at this car? He is wandering around. We can walk? No dad wants to see. What the hell are you? Seeing a car spinning around, my father was so furious that he thought it was the craziest thing he had ever seen, but it was so different. I mean, the hit show was The Jetsons, which was about the future, meets George Jensen and here. it was an ooh car like the Jetson car and when you're 12 or 13 years old oh my gosh that's the coolest thing in the world when you drive this vehicle you'll get a couple of things one is the engine temperature is around 1400 degrees, there's a temperature gauge up here that goes up to 2000 degrees, you go so high you burned the engine, it's got a really unique instrument cluster, if you look at the tachometer it basically idles around 20,000 RPM and it has red lines.

At 60,000 RPM, that's the entire air filter housing, there would probably be five times more air passing through this engine than an equivalent person. The engine start switch is here, this is the gear selector and you push it down to the part that needs to be there for the engine to start other than that, it's no different than any other car, just an old AM radio at least has one tooparking brake they were talking about names, the typhoon was the name that was thrown around for a while, in fact, one of the prototypes had a typhoon, but when I got there they had decided on the turbine, all the They were known as the Chrysler turbine.

We cannot have a Ford turbine now because we recognize a new beginning in automotive energy, but also the beginning of the first public evaluation program under controlled test conditions ever attempted, no car company has committed to fielding a

revolution

ary new type of vehicle . in the hands of motorists in order to study consumer reaction in a wide range of driving conditions, it's another Chrysler first where we announced that we were going to have this user program, it really peaked interest of the people, the public reaction was simply overwhelming. almost 25,000 unsolicited requests for a car with turbines, from a marketing point of view it seems that they expected the cars to get into the hands of people who would drive them, who would see them with them but not in a way that would make them look bad.

I don't want racing cars to crash, be driven drunk or anything like that. General people from all walks of life had these vehicles. There was no socioeconomic class. We were looking at the male female race. Gender. It didn't matter as long as we had it. In a broad section, temperature and elevation mattered a lot, so we got test data on how the engine performed at high altitudes, low humidity, all those things were taken into account, so it was really marketing and engineering in its heyday, the show itself was a big PR first maybe a dozen installments or major press programs Lynn Townsend was interested in this until his years he in the first installment delivered the car you know, now we're ready to introduce the Mr. and Mrs. vlaja Bob's people showed up, it was a high-class promotion, my father was user number 160.

We knew we had been chosen to be users in February of '65 when I found out we were getting it. He was alone, no, no, so out of nowhere I was like, is this what it's about? the turbine car anyway yeah and he hung up and I just said ballistic cars were my life even before we had the Sherman car so to me it was the coolest thing that could happen because I get to drive a turban car the Sunday before us. they got the car, they published an article in the newspaper, two cars were delivered the day we got ours, you know, of course, the press was there, they gave us the keys probably 10 times, it was a big PR event.

Each driver was given an orientation, it was everything that people expected from a car that has, you know, two pedals, automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, they had to put warning signs everywhere not to put fuel with Lead in the tank, Chrysler said you can run. In anything that burns, as long as it's not leaded fuel, the burning gasoline had a tendency to coat the lead on the wheel and then cause the blades to overheat and begin to disintegrate. Most people at that time used it with diesel. My dad and I studied that engineering, but they gave us, we studied a history book, we studied everything we could find in the car, it was exciting, it made you the coolest dad on the block, if you were chosen for the program, you were a celebrity and because he was a celebrity, we became celebrities.

This is the fabulous Chrysler turbine car and this is Mr. Alden Olson of the city of Duluth, who used this car for a period of three months. You have about a month left, Mr. Olson, what kind of luck have you had with him? car very good luck I really enjoyed it it was a fabulous car it is nothing like anything anyone has seen on public roads before here there is someone driving they must be special the excitement was just phenomenal in fact they gave all the employees the I used the vehicle for a week and drove it around my neighborhood everyone went crazy I talked to people who told me they were hiding the car because they wanted to have some alone time everywhere I went it caused a stir, they were right about us I think we were users Those were Good PR for the Chrysler and the car performed in the mountain area.

How did you perform there? It's like you don't have a foot in anything. It really takes off and moves. The hills do not bother at the same time. a little bit because of the way they tell these families, oh, anyone with a license in your family can drive it, so if you send it to a guy, his wife can drive it, his 16 year old son can drive it most of the time. time we travel. I drive half the way. and he drove half of the way, so I estimate our car had about four to five thousand miles on it having had that car for a couple of months when you were a kid, you just got your driver's license, other kids got a Corvette.

I had a turbine car for a 16 year old boy, it was a big event, we weren't really on a schedule because we knew every time we stopped for fuel it was going to be the same thing over and over again, people would come out. from the carpentry and say oh, that's a car with a turban, let's look at the engine, can we hear it start? We never get tired of each other. People were just impressed by the car, they felt the sound of the acceleration because if you started that thing it would break you. Returning through the action of the variable nozzles, the driver is assured the same control as he can get and the best foreign conventional passenger car at a time when we highly value differences, the local Dodge dealer was our choice if we had a problem.

For him, you would contact the coordinator if someone you know had an accident or if something broke right to the dealership, people like Bill Carey would come and assess the situation. Bill Carey was really important because when a vehicle was shipped to a certain city, the invoice would go to that dealership there and teach those mechanics how to keep these vehicles running. My position was turbine service supervisor. I had an office in a big graph on the law with 50 chains where all those 50 cars were at any time six regional service representatives. who I trained and they took care of ninety percent of the things, if it was something unusual that they had never come across, then I would call on the phone at two in the morning and someone would say in California, hey, you know.

Some of the cars were malfunctioning and I had to get out of bed to leave. I traveled a lot, the point was to get the car back on the road as quickly as possible to minimize downtime. I love it. playing with the damn things, you know, we learned the areas where problems could occur and they did, there was definitely a learning curve and mainly it was the startup procedure. The scanning procedure was not well thought out, it did not anticipate that people would do bad things. If you give the vehicle to 200 people and the people are so excited that they started it before it was idling and in many cases the engine overheated, they toasted a couple of engines.

Every car had at least one engine replacement. some of the many, you know, there was a stock of engines ready to go, they could be changed back with relative ease. It happened so often that a couple of us could change an engine in an hour. The last 10 cars had a completely modified electronic starter control. system and sequence so you can't do that and that's how all projects evolve, you learn from your mistakes, people would have them for 90 days, someone in the field, whether it's Bill Carrier, someone else checked the engine, but then let's move on To the next one. hands of one person and we get more data, more feedback and more public relations, so 200 families across the country will drive the car for free for a period of three months and report back to Chrysler about their own reactions, the type of evaluation of the market that so far as we have been able to determine is completely new to the automobile industry, one thing is certain, with a two-year public testing program up and running, Chrysler Corporation's turbine automobile will be in the public press and in the public's mind almost continuously. free publicity that Chrysler got in the '60s and '70s, I mean don't forget this starred in a movie, but I made up my mind and then I reached the level, they say I don't know how they did it, but apparently George Jr got Someone in Hollywood Who It adds to the idea that you guys need to make a car movie.

The teenagers will dig in and we'll put in a turbine car and there's like a five minute commercial in the middle of this movie that says this is going to replace the piston engine that now appears below our camera and the fifth position is Casey's turban car Owens. This is a

revolution

ary machine, a concept that may one day shake up the entire automotive industry. George Thatcher was the guy driving the car. The judge was the mechanic in the research lab and a very competent guy, he spent six months in California on a movie set with that car, the turbine engine will be what will come as a result of your big win today.

I hope so, Casey, what are your plans? Can you tell us? about them I'm going to quit car racing What are you planning to do? I'm going back to school Michigan Tech Center The other thing Chrysler did was they would take these cars on college tours at Michigan Tech or Harvard and they would show them off. Getting off the turbine car to try to get the students to say, Hey, look, you want a high-tech job as an engineer, come work for Chrysler, look what we're doing, really, the whole company joined the Turman program and took out these things.

They took them to shopping malls and dealerships, drawing thousands and thousands of people through them. Now the main exhibit, of course, features the turban car, but the current model exhibits get the same prominence. It was a halo car. People went to the Chrysler dealership to see the turbine car and they bought. the Dodge Coronet or they bought the Chrysler or the Valiant or the Imperial, whatever, looking at some of the sales numbers Chrysler had a couple of pretty good years after that and they owed it to themto the turbine car interest of other companies and groups. working in Urban Development said we are not going to get the recognition that they are getting we are not going to get the press Ford finally abandoned their program and so did GM industry wide became Chrysler doing this no one is catching up there was no I doubt Chrysler was the turbine company.

We had a fantastic three months in our life the summer we had the car. They had a slot car track in Duluth. Everyone knew about the slot car track because I was a guy who had the turbine slot. car, we probably put about 13 and a half or fourteen thousand miles on it. I think we were the biggest user. You know, we thought okay, if we're going to tell this thing, we're going to drive it, so we drove it. I would do it. I go out to the garage many nights a week after my dad gets home, turn the key on, and just look at the script in the data set.

The electroluminescent lighting was so beautiful three months later, that was boom, gone, we're just the average Joe. citizens again, you know that we were given the opportunity to show people something that they had never seen before, that is a beautiful thing for me personally, it made a big difference in my life. I was a bit of a loner and I didn't like sports. cars, so I was kind of a geek of the day and I switched after being on the turban show. He was more outgoing, more confident. My dad was a very polite person and I became a sociable person after using the car for three months.

Yes, it changed my life. The overwhelming sentiment I heard from people who drove these cars was that I would have loved to keep the car if I could. They loaned them to 203 different families who traveled more than a million miles. These people were actually part of engineering. program, whether they knew it or now that they were putting up the miles, they were giving their opinion about a week later, two guys from Chrysler came to our house and wanted us to know what was really happening with the cars when they were in the real world. It was a summary prepared with all the data, comments from the owners in general, the people who had the cars loved them, they were getting unsolicited offers from the public saying: I will buy one of those cars, I don't care about the price, it is extremely positive.

They liked the fact that on cold mornings there was no need to wait for the heater to heat up, which back then could take a while. We had 1200 degrees available to run through a heat exchanger; It was almost instantaneous to defrost a car in cold weather one of the things they learned from many of the customers is that about 60 liked the noise, many people did not find it annoying and irritating we think it is classic in this era and it is part of the personality of the vehicle that was, you know, I'm different. I'm driving around my neighborhood and everyone knows I'm ready.

Something Chrysler proved it can make a jet-powered car foolproof enough that the average American can drive it without destroying it, that's what it is. It's remarkable, we now have 55 cars here in Detroit, the program is over, we can't keep all of these vehicles and we can't just sell them because we couldn't have them on a used car lot rusting away somewhere without being cared for. The Corporation didn't want to. that they would end up in the hands of people with hemis in them and this kind of thing that would diminish the reputation of the program, they just wanted to keep it pure and that's typical of the automotive industry, it's a Chrysler.

I contacted museums all over the country and told them that if they wanted one of these cars in their museum, we would let them have it at the time when it was still hot to be used, it was a new car, I think whoever puts in a new car in a museum. were disappointed the social museums accepted the offer the cars were sent to the museums that accepted them the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History got one that they often finish the Peterson Museum one went to Harrah's in Nevada one went to the Smithsonian one went to the Museum of Transportation in St Louis you would go to the Detroit Historical Society and in the past you would go to the Henry Ford.

Their show cars had gone to their own archives in museums or they would destroy them and that is a common thing, believe it or not, that the car companies do with prototypes, so six cars went to museums. Chrysler kept three and the rest were destroyed, those cars were taken. to a junkyard in Romulus Michigan, in the shadow of Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the saddest part of this show was that I spent an entire day watching them pick them up, take them with a pickaxe, alcohol in the field tank, let the fuel ran all over the ground under the car.

You put it back down and you set it on fire, you watch it all burn and then you pick it up from the pile and you smash it, you accept things and you do what you have to do, but it was hard, I didn't do it, I didn't enjoy it. That day, I mean, we were there showing him off and all of a sudden he comes home and we have to get rid of the city. It was difficult for a lot of people, a lot of engineers, a lot of people involved in the program, but it's kind. of the cost of doing business at Auto World it was a sad day when they smashed all the cars, that must be one of the most painful things for me to see because I know one of them is our car, but you know that's the reason. why corporations do exactly that the company was looking at liability aspect number one this is called haunted capitalism here it's just a matter of business you can't sell something before its time in its time it's just not going to work the program continued after By the 60's it stopped being a promotional gimmick and became serious engineering, but there was definitely a change in attitude towards what people wanted from a car, the novelty of the turbine car, the novelty, the jet age was really upon us. being replaced by speed and power. the new muscle car leader of the Dodge Rebellion enough muscle to catch anything on the road there were still versions test benches test vehicles launched you know, most of the engines went to Dodge vehicles crowns Aspens and then a Chrysler Baron the engines that came after this, the guys perform much better, I mean, they would really move in the 1970s, the EPA showed up looking for people to bid on alternative energy sources for automobiles, so for six years we worked under a contract with the government and that was when we were introduced to the government. terms reports meetings was another world and we didn't like it but we did it because it was the only way out.

I was in the gas turbine program from 1952 until it ended in 1981. At one point Lynn Townsend credited the Chrysler 50 turbine. The car program was one of the things that got Chrysler out of its ups and downs, so we were satisfied with that, but finally the facts caught up with us. I will tell you that we were never able to reduce the cost to a reasonable level. The level for the New York City comparison was like 300 or something, it was always more, much more, so this went back and forth and I never saw anything that was close to an equal level with an Epiphany, possibly worth it yes All of a sudden you were getting 40, 50, 60 miles per gallon but it was actually still getting close to when you get into a 318 engine and then the emissions were never met hoping we could get them for me it was a gradual understanding . of the hill we were trying to climb and we probably weren't going to make it to the top, it was a difficult time overseas, the company just couldn't see that kind of investment going forward if you look at Chrysler's automotive turbine, Well, I would say which is a show that started here and ended here, but not really because the technology and what they learned from it carried over to other things during all these years that they worked on this, it didn't work for the general public, but that engine . works on a limited basis for a government project, much of the work we did was instrumental in the development of the M1 Abrams tank.

The main battle tank used by the US military is powered by a huge turbine engine that was developed by the guys who worked on this. show they had quite a few engines running after the show St Louis took their show engine put it in her car ran hers to get St Louis Cards running there was a time when Chrysler had three turbine cars running she sold her car and Tom Monahan bought Tom Monahan had the car for a while but it wasn't running and it was bought by a guy named Frank Kletz, who is a well-known car collector in Indiana, and Frank Kleps had the car in his collection for a while at some point .

I was talking to Jay Leno Jay said it's a really cool car. He got there, too bad it doesn't work and Jay was friends with Bob Lutz at Chrysler at the time. I called Bob Bletz and told him he had a friend with a great Chrysler. Now we have an extra engine, take it, she gave it to me. I gave him the clips. Frank started the car with that engine and Frank applauded a running turbine car and then I got a turban card, yeah, yeah, and Chrysler was going bankrupt. I just called the bank and said: I will give you this much money.

It really is one of those. I wasn't looking at it as a future investment. I just liked it. I thought it was fascinating. Bankers didn't look at them as kinetic works of art either or. pieces of American music or was it just an old car, do you really want to pay this for that, yeah, okay, now Jay Leno has a car with a turban and Frank Kleps unfortunately passed away. His son got the collection and then his son sold the collection when it was announced that the car was being sold, he just blew up the car world with people you know saying, "Oh my God, stop what you're doing." .

There is a turban for sale. His car was purchased by the Stahl Museum in Michigan. Ted and Mary Stahl are the The founders of Stahl's Automotive Foundation, Ted, had emailed me about seven cars, the turban was at the top of the list and I don't even remember what the other cars were. To our surprise, he wrote back and said we had it. We were very excited because our mission is primarily to educate young people and help develop a passion for these cars like we all have. We set up the cars in somewhat chronological order so you can basically walk through time.

It's an experience that I won't forget that you have to come here and see it and hear it to believe it because we also have our automated musical instruments. We have a world that is your theater organ that sounds everywhere. People don't expect the Chrysler turbine to be an attraction when they come here. There are so many people who come here just to see that car and we would love to share it to expose the stories about the car and the turbine program to the average public. It's an honor when we first buy the car. Bill Carey.

He called me and basically told me don't start the car until I get there. I know how to treat them and I'll show you how to treat them right. I spend as much time as I can with them. I mean, it's like he's my own son. I know he's really been an educator of the tournament program for the last 50 years, so we have people who know how to work on these cars and keep them running for the Next Generation. The next Bill Carey is our first line of defense. He came here and we started in the car.

The Force showed us what to do and what not to do. We run it with aviation kerosene. Once you get behind the wheel, you can hear the car and see it running. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It will probably be one of the highlights. In my run, the driver immediately feels an absence of engine vibration and a cockpit feel that is accentuated by the aircraft-style instrumentation and console control station. Tomorrow's teen may one day impress his girlfriend by letting off 25 feet of steam. He drove a lot in mine. I took him on The Tonight Show.

I use it all the time. I use it like a normal car until I melted it down with a Turman engine. The regenerator of your toaster. The wheel of your toaster. You just don't make another one right away because the tools don't. It doesn't exist anymore, I pick up the phone and I hear Jay Leno's voice on the other end and I literally thought someone was playing a prank on me and then I called my brother. I talked to Steve Jay on the phone and he left me a message about his energy, oh yeah. I forgot to tell you that he toasted him, he needs your help and I called him again and that's when he started telling me what had happened.

Well, now the engine is disassembled because you don't understand. I have all the pieces placed. about my store, I just called it BS. I tell him you don't have pieces placed throughout your store because I do. He started taking pictures and showed me the turban and all the blades are burnt. I tell him no problem, we'll do it. Those all day long, it's just a different setup, we can do that and then he showed me a picture of the regenerator core with the big chunks missing and everything and I was like, wow, that's serious, that's the hard part. , is a masterpiece of manufacturing.

I'm totally surprised at how they put it together.I helped Rick break down the one that was destroyed and we were trying to theorize how they lifted it together. It is mostly a lost art. Thank you. The documentation does not exist in the engine because the company. The closing of the program told us that we had to destroy all the foreign parts and drawings in which we had taken on the project and it was astronomical but it is doable. I love a project like that. I loved working with old things, you always learn something. and you realize that part of problem solving they discovered the simplest and most elegant way to achieve the goal, while with some of the newer technologies they could find a way to do what they wanted to do, but it's not always that simple . and sturdy, oh, there's millions of dollars worth of machinery here, the space age, the latest in cutting-edge technology and it's all available to the Blue Jay Project team, so now we have guys volunteering to help us rebuild the end of this crisis, so I'm very excited about this project, it's great, they are trying to do it, they are all doing it with Health volunteers in Williams, people stay, they have to work, our engine technicians, we have some of the best in the world working. at Williams International, but when you take apart an old turbine engine it's a little different than taking apart what we're used to today: designing and building parts when you don't have any drawings, no specifications, nothing is Pretty Tough that Rick gave.

I called and they told me that they were going to form this volunteer group and the first thing I did was contact the other 20 or 30 people I have contact with and I said: here is a project, are you interested in participating? It was a relief to have a guy from Chrysler and I was like okay, this is starting to come into Focus, we can do this, you know, and then he left and I got a couple more guys too, we want to help, we want to volunteer. Also, we just want help saving one of these things and I was like wow and then you find out who they are.

I mean, Jerry, he's the test cell guy, he built the engine, he knew everything. Bill Carey, he's on the cover of my brother's book, you know what it is. the guy who went out and fixed them in the field and you say, okay, that's pretty good, it doesn't get any better than that, then you get into the project and realize that the regenerator cores are the hardest part of the whole thing and then Suddenly Ted appears and I say, Ted, what did you do on the project? Because I built 80 to 90 percent of the entire regeneration course and was welcomed to the team.

Everyone's little notebook of how they accomplished things died with them. or I have the story, yes, and that's a shame, a lot of good things were lost, so basically I'm here working from memory and from the little personal notes that I'm gathered from, but it's been about 60 years, Jerry, when it comes . here he can answer questions that I wouldn't even have thought to ask and that cross his mind, but I still

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y respect those guys because I see how difficult it is for us to reproduce some of these parts with all the latest great technology that we have now and you wonder, how did they do this back then?

They didn't have computers, they had slide rules, they did it with paper and pencil to be able to create this in 1953 in the car that We're talking about '63, it's just amazing, they have machinery that I would love to have in the '60s, yeah, and they're making great things, and if someone is going to restore this, I think they have the best option because from their number one background and they have to go to an attitude organization, you know everyone has money, well, they get to work on something that they were passionate about back then, they worked there for decades on this project, the rug was pulled out from under them. and suddenly there's a boom right front and center again.

I mean, they would never have dreamed that something like this would have happened. I think it's a great faith, it's got some fun things going on, yeah, yeah, well I just hope you guys can get enough experience and get it up and running before we die, let's get this thing up and running again. We'll have the engine running on the dyno, first make sure it's all broken in, then we'll put the car in and do a break-in. period there and after that Jay has to start hitchhiking, it's important to preserve things like this, you know, there are very few of these left, if you release one at a time, it doesn't take long before there aren't any left that work.

It is very important that this car be documented so that future generations understand the amount of time and the amount of passion that was put into making these vehicles work. To me, this shows people what can be done if you put in the work and stick with it. Is an achievement. You know, human creativity is there, there's an example of it, not long ago, the guy emailed me and said your dad let me drive that car and I've never forgotten it. Do you know another one? That kind of thing touched my heart. Many people have memories about it and it just stirs up such a positive emotion that you want to avoid now.

I miss him. Yes, I loved that car. I mean, it's a very strong word, but. In fact, I love that car that people in the '60s associated with the tournament program and I think that connection deserves to be preserved. A remarkable new means of automotive power. A striking example of Chrysler engineering leadership. Chrysler as a company we should be very proud of where our ancestors were doing the work they did George Hubner was an engineer and I jokingly called him a showman, in reality he is a dreamer. You went back to 1953 and '54 and saw the guys shoving the first one into a car you'd never seen before.

I imagine he would go as far during the time he was abroad. I wish everyone could talk to the guys who put their heart and soul into these vehicles. The people I met and worked with were truly a great product. The group was tremendously creative and fun loving every day was a challenge every day was something different it was a little bit of engineering a lot of research some black magic and intense sweat I want to thank everyone I worked with who is alive or passed we will meet in a big turban sky, although the turbine car might seem like a dead end of some kind.

I don't think it was like that. No one else tried to do something as radical as this, so I think it's nice to recognize that he tried, it shows the ingenuity of a group of people who took some of the seed of a wartime airplane and tried to put it into the economy. American as a viable product. The fact that he didn't get there is still important to the foreigner. foreign