1963 Chrysler Turbine

I'm Steve Lacey from Road & Track dominum here at the Walter P Chrysler Museum and Auburn Hills my good friend mark Lieberman of nostalgic motoring we're here today because we love Chrysler Turbine cars in fact I'm standing in front of a Chrysler Turbine car I wrote a book about these cars called Chrysler Turbine car the rise and fall of Detroit's coolest creation and today's presentation is being partially sponsored by xiah mall car care products who helped underwrite this project so we're gonna learn about the cars right now what they were all about what they did and where they all went many people don't know that Chrysler was building it turbine-powered cars from 1953 to 1983 a 30-year program of putting in essence jet engines into automobiles a man named George Huebner worked at Christ when he was really the godfather of the program George Huebner was convinced that America not only needed turbine powered cars but that someday turbine powered cars would actually be all over the roads in America so starting in 1953 Chrysler shoehorned a turbine car a turbine engine into a car and then they as he developed over the years they came up with a second generation and a third generation so that in the early 1960s he had a fourth generation turbine engine which they put into the car that's behind me so in 1963 Chrysler decided to build a fleet of turbine powered cars to prove that the project was viable so Chrysler actually decided to build 50 cars lend them to the American people and in a essence a huge publicity stunt proved that not only were the cars something that would work but something that the average consumer could use and they thought well what better way to do that than just give the cars out to average Americans put a fleet of cars in the road and see what happens Chrysler identified a number of advantages for putting a turbine engine in an automobile the first was fewer parts these engines have a roughly half the parts that a piston engine does next was where without reciprocating components in here you have far less where and far less maintenance in addition to that vibration was significant reduce these engines run smooth as silk also multi-fuel capabilities these engines can be run out of almost anything flammable so the versatility for the fuel requirements was significant advantage these cars were designed by Elwood Engel he came from Ford Motor Company originally and was responsible for many of the t-bird designs and you can see his influence of the body and other components in this in this vehicle well he put together a design that was very interesting because he incorporated jet age styling the idea was not only was it going to be powered by a turbine but it need to look like it was powered by a German in addition to that they went ahead and they hired Ghia in Italy in order to build these cars now gear was a well-known coach builder at that point and they would go ahead and produce limited volumes of special high-end bodies for other manufacturers so they were very well suited to the task gia took Elle Woods designs and built these bodies and and the chassis they were then crated up and shipped here once the vehicles arrived in Detroit they were then disassembled again by Chrysler wired and the drive trains were installed in them these drive trains were very special and obviously designed specifically for this car before we popped the hood in the Chrysler Turbine car like to point out a few features of the car the designers specifically wanted everyone to know this was a turbine car no question about it so first of all it's called turbine it does not have a name Chrysler debated calling it the typhoon they had some other names they kicked around and they realized hey let's just call it a turbine car because that's what it is but second of all as we go through the car you're gonna notice that it has a lot of styling touches reminiscent of the jet age so for instance the headlight has cooling fins around it the grille is this neat aluminum look and as we go through the car we're gonna be seeing these styling touches over and over again with cooling fins on things like the rear view mirror but of course that's appropriate for a turbine car so with the hood up on the Chrysler Turbine car there's some interesting things to look at first thing you'll notice of course is turban Chrysler Corporation and again they want everyone to know this is a turbine engine now when you look at the engine itself you'll recognize it doesn't look like a typical piston engine of the era there's this large cast-iron device right here this is the housing for the turbine engine inside this are the exact same components that a jet engine would have inside of it but that turbine housing is right there and then on both sides of the turbine engine are these large metal pieces that are gray those are regenerators and Chrysler had developed over the years previous to this a concept of regeneration that is they recycled the heat that came out of the engine and it did two things it increased the combustion efficiency of the engine but it also made the exhaust temperature lower so on a turbine car the exhaust was actually lowering temperatures cooler than a typical piston engine car of the time which is ironic because one of the biggest things that people mistakenly believe about the turbine cars is that the exhaust was dangerously hot in fact the exhaust in these cars was cooler than that from a regular piston engine car of the time well there are several important things that I'd like to point out to you under the hood first is this giant air box Chrysler did a great job of being able to contain the sound of this engine by creating a silencer and it was very important for them to be able to create a method of filtering air without restricting its flow so they designed this giant air box works really well and is very efficient another component of this is the braking system it's very unusual and peculiar to this car because they wanted to have power brakes but since a turbine engine generates no vacuum they had to find another way of doing it so they did it like the trucks do it and they created a system that uses air pressure instead there's a small compressor tucked in here next to the air silencer and then there's a tank inside this fender well that holds pressure for a period of time allowing it to boost the the brake pressure and giving it power brakes another interesting component of this is that it provides instant heat to the passenger compartment as you can see in the back portion there is a heat duct and that heat duct as soon as you fire this engine up is able to provide heat to the passenger compartment another component that you can see up front here is an oil cooler well since this engine doesn't hold oil per se it utilizes the transmission oil which is pumped through the transmission and up into this engine and then recirculates back this cooler keeps all of that oil to temperature and then lastly each of these cars are stamped with a special marking designating specifically which car this is in the production people often refer to this car is a jet car and there are definitely some similarities certainly a jet engine and a turbine engine have the same operational basis but the turbine engine in this automobile doesn't operate on thrust propulsion like a jet would in an airplane what this operates on is the jet power that's created from this turbine engine actually moves another impeller and that fan is connected to a shaft which rotates and drives the transmission so it's a contained operation as opposed to thrust where you have an open operation also in terms of principles of how these engines work it's also very interesting unlike a piston engine which has multiple explosions going on continuously this has one continuous explosion what happens is you have the velocity of air running through this engine that runs through a compressor that compressor elevates the temperature of the air to the point where fuel can be added and it will explode and you get a continuous amount of combustion that is what enables this engine to be so smooth and to deliver the type of power that it does so Chrysler built these cars specifically with the goal of being able to give them to the average American and have the personnel to get in the car and drive it just like any other car so interestingly when you sit down in a Chrysler Turbine car your first thought is well this is just a typical car right because everything's pretty much similar you got a steering wheel and you got a shifter but as you look closer at the items inside the car you discover that no this is in fact a Chrysler Turbine car so for instance there's a tachometer over here a lot of cars have got tachometers well this tachometer goes to 60,000 rpm more than ten times what you're gonna be running a typical car at as far as our PMS go on the other side we have an engine temperature gauge but the engine temperature gauge measures turbine Inlet temperature not coolant temperature because of course there is no engine coolant in this car so the temperature gauge goes to 2,000 degrees again 10 times the number you're gonna see in a typical car of the day with respect to what's happening under the hood so as you move further through the through the passenger compartment you discover a lot of other neat things that have to do with the fact it's a turbine car so for instance there's a bar holding the rear view mirror to the windshield it's got aluminum cooling fins on it again they're non-functional but they're there just as a neat cool styling touch again the center console here up at the front more cooling fins and as you work your way back you'll notice the controls are nice space age looking controls you know you've got your shifter you've got your interior controls and so on but again they all have fins and and cooling fin touches on them and so on clearly to remind you that you are driving a space-age car again moving a little bit further across the dashboard you'll notice that there's a brake pressure light and again that's because this cars got funky brakes this car doesn't have brakes powered by a vacuum assist therefore when you fire the car for the first time it's got to build pressure in that tank to run the brakes so until that light goes off you can't drive so that's one of the things they had to remind people that hey everything the car is just like any other car except for when you fire it up wait till that light comes on before you drive so you have brakes and then finally if you pop the glovebox open there is one big warning in the glovebox and it says specifically no leaded fuel these cars would run in any liquid that burned but the most common fuel back in the 60s was leaded pump gas and the problem with leaded pump gas is that the lead when the combustion process happened left residue on the fans inside the turbine engine and residue and there is not good because number one it clogs things up but number two it can throw things out of balance when something's spinning at 22:40 55 60,000 rpm you can't have it even the slightest bit out of balance so the one thing that told you is if you got one of these cars do not put leaded gas in it you could put kerosene into it you can put jet fuel into it you can put tequila into it you put a hairspray into it you can put peanut oil into it you can put home heating oil in it but whatever you do do not put leaded gas so most of people who got these cars back in the 60s we're taking the truck stops and put diesel fuel into them because diesel fuel is very very common in the 1960s there are certain features on this car which we find commonplace now but we're very unusual at the time certainly in American cars in this instance I'm talking about hood release and remote trunk release these cars had separate latches in order to pop both of those pieces now it was very common to have that now back in 1963 this was rather unusual but because Ghia was incorporating it in their builds for cars such as Lancia Fiat and Alfa Romeo they incorporated it in this in addition Christ who thought it was a particularly good idea to be able to secure the hood because curious onlookers would easily jump in and pop that hood if they could and by having it under lock and key in the passenger compartment and made it much tougher well here in the trunk compartment it looks basically conventional however there are some unusual things that I should point out on the far side there's a compartment that holds two 12-volt batteries in this instance you had to have that because this engine took 24 volts in order to get it spinning to an optimum speed where you could have enough compression to fire the engine there was a special switch incorporated in this that was automatic that when you engage the key it would combine the two batteries in a series and allow 24 volts to run to the starter as soon as you let go of the key it would drop back to 12 volts in order to power the rest of the car conventionally they needed this in order to operate and start the turbine the rear of the car is also very unusual as you can see they continued the theme of whatever they could to make this thing stand out as a turbine car the long pieces that came out with reverse lights nestled inside the sculpted bumper I'm sure a very very difficult piece to manufacture and then we have the unusual shape of the trunk well both the trunk and the hood were aluminum which leads me to another story they were Chrysler was very specific about selecting the people that would be driving this car and the first person they selected was a gentleman by the name of Richard waha Richard was an engineer at IBM and he was well-spoken he was a young man of about 25 years old had a young family kind of the ideal candidate for them well they were gave him the nota Mobil with some fanfare and he took it and started to use the vehicle well apparently one afternoon when his wife was driving it she was stopped in a light and somebody rear-ended her not her fault but crushed the back of the car this created a giant problem obviously he contacted Chrysler said oh my goodness this terrible accident happened what are we to do he actually they actually instructed him to take the car to a specific body shop which had an aluminum specialist at it the gentleman looked at the automobile and contacted Chrysler and said do you have a spare trunk lid well they did Ghia sent additional spare panels over in the event that something like this would happen they forwarded a panel to him unfortunately like many hand-built vehicles it didn't fit it didn't even come close so they told him do what you can hammer that trunk out make it work and fix the old original one which he did and they put the car back on the road so Chrysler built the fleet of 55 turbine cars they lent 50 of them basically to the public over a period of a couple years and the experiment was a raving success the cars actually logged over a million miles relatively trouble-free and when they were done most of the people who had the cars said yet they would love they have one of these cars if they could at the prices right and so on so so the program as far as Christ was concerned was a success they proved that they could build a turbine car put turbine engine a typical car and have people drive it typical American consumers and drive the car and the car would run well hi I'm Marc Lieberman and I'm here today to tell you about a product from Simon the car care products company we all want our cars to look perfect and be protected from the elements but rarely do we get an opportunity to hand wax and shine our cars well the folks at simulcast Ellucian of this problem spray glades spray glaze utilizes carnauba SAP and lotus leaf oil in a nano film technology the results are spectacular you get the 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to use it gives me more time to drive we're here with Brant Rosen Bush manager of historical services at FCA he was the gentleman responsible for allowing us to film this automobile today welcome Brandon thank you for bringing the car oh it's my pleasure glad you came out what is it like to show this car to the public you know it's a lot of fun we take it out a lot it's one of our more popular vehicles people come running for it and they there have stories of their use when a neighborhood was bringing at home or they've just heard about it and they want to come running up and they want to listen to it they all expect the grass to catch fire or the pavement behind them and we have tell them that's not the case so it's a lot of fun to take it out what is your role with FCA and what do you spend most of your time doing well I'm lucky enough to be involved with a small team of people that are dedicated to preserving our history I manage the archives and also the historical vehicle collection we about 330 vehicles in the collection they're an active they're always traveling to a show we do between 70 100 events a year so they're use they're going out there here in our museum and then the archives we just try and preserve the corporate history we're in a major process of digitizing the archives we answer people's questions and we just try to keep the brand out there and help the people that are on their own keeping the brands and the old cars alive excellent well we really enjoyed having the car out here thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate my pleasure thank you so Christ were built turbine cars from 1953 to 1983 but we all know that of course the turbine car has never ruled the roads like George Huebner thought they would in 1966 Christ had toyed with the idea about putting a turbine engine into the Dodge Charger and maybe building 500 or so of them but the problem is that when they crunched the numbers on it they discovered that number one to make the engines in a factory with mass production techniques would cost them about a billion dollars with a B to build the factory just to make the engines when they priced building engines singly like by hand they realized it cost no less than $10,000 apiece and you can't sell an engine the 1960s for $10,000 when a v8 engine might be three or four hundred bucks or a highly optioned v8 six or seven hundred dollars that's crazy so they couldn't sell them that way so they decided not to ever sell turbine cars to public but there are other problems with the turbine program that arose in the 1980s and prior to that as the white Chrysler actually gave up on the program altogether it wasn't just expensive the cars Chrysler realized that first of all when they're building these engines they want them to be bulletproof and run well but they hadn't really worked in the problem of emissions and these cars were not ready for the emissions problems and the new standards the EPA was passing in the wake of all the smog concerns that people had in the early 1970s but then number two Chrysler ran into financial trouble several times and so the cost of the program the fact that they didn't meet EPA standards and so on meant that unfortunately for us alike turbine cars the turbine program had to be killed ok so this is how the numbers work Chrysler built 55 of these cars and all the first five cars were design studies they were figuring out what sort of interior exterior color combinations they were going to get they knew that they wanted this turbine bronze color but they didn't know whether they were going to use a black vinyl top or a black interior and how those combinations were gonna work so other the first five we had a variation in those in fact there was even one car that they painted white with a blue stripe following that all the what they would consider to be production cars were this turbine bronze collar with a black vinyl top and a bronze matching interior now of those cars the original 5546 cars were destroyed nine cars remain at that time they took three of the cars and those stayed with Chrysler six of the cars were sold to museums ultimately one of the three cars that Chrysler had was sold to Jay Leno one of the cars that were in the various museums was also sold to a private individual so the remaining cars now five in museums and two with Chrysler are the only cars that remain now of the 46 cars that they destroyed this was really a situation that was I guess an unfortunate circumstance of how they brought the cars in the country when when Chrysler imported cars they brought them in on a temporary import plan and that temporary program meant that they had to either destroy the cars or return them to the country of origin so 46 cars unfortunately saw their demise burned and crushed those cars are gone forever so that's everything you need to know about the Chrysler Turbine car I'm Steve later for road and track comm again I wrote the book Chrysler Turbine car the rise and fall of Detroit's coolest creation thank you to my good friend Mark Lieberman I'm a nostalgic motoring of course for helping me explain this car and also for taking for a drive and worked the Walter P Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills who were kind enough to let us take a look at this car this car of course is in the archives of Chrysler and of course we have to thank Brant Rosen Bush as well this episode was partially funded by xym all car care products they could thank them and also our good friends at Motown Digital thanks a lot bye-bye

Channel: Motown Digital

Views: 123,415

Keywords: Road and Track, Nostalgic Motoring, Steve Lehto, Mark Lieberman

Id: PEF-d-N2FXU

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2016