Jay Leno's Jet Car

they ran on anything that burns with oxygen it's not that loud you drive with your white I hate this car hi I'm Dennis gage and welcome to my classic car we're back out in some time sunny California to visit Jay Leno I always love hanging out with Jase always got such cool stuff turbine cars I think that's the theme today so let's let's see what's up here Jay Jay Jay hey Jay Oh Dennis hey oh it's good to have you come by yeah don't let this car come between us how are ya I'm doing great just say it didn't call or anything well you know sometimes it's better to surprise you yeah yeah I love surprise well this is kind of a turbine day it is a training day yeah yeah this is uh let's talk turbines okay now a number of years ago I showed you the turbine motorcycle [Applause] it's not until 70 that it really but you don't want to break the law and that would be wrong this is the first really practical turbine car the Chrysler Turbine car from the early 60s 1962 Rover the English come they built the first turbine but it never went in any kind of production Chrysler really thought this was gonna work these cars always struck me as looking very Thunderbird yeah because of the same designer was the designer who did the Thunderbird who did this body as well and this was not meant to be a sports car or a futuristic car even a concept car is a family car was meant to be a family car with a turbine engine in it and I would say the turbine and this would be equal to maybe a 318 v8 the advantages are incredibly smooth no warm-up time you don't have to change fluids probably ever they supposedly ran on almost anything they ran out anything that burns with oxygen when they took these to France they filled the tank with Chanel number five perfume when they went to Mexico they filled it with tequila sir are you serious yeah no really but the interesting thing was it really was the future I mean when you realized that India China a lot of countries barely had internal combustion engines we're moving into jet engines yeah I mean I'll show you some stuff in the other room some big posters is the piston engine dead in ten years of piston engine will be gone emissions are not good Jets it's tough to control emissions where they were brilliant was they were able to keep it quiet uh-huh in fact in fact it makes not any noise at all they just put that noise in just almost like an electric car to let people know that it's there this car probably would have been about 14,000 in 1963 when a Cadillac with 6,000 7,000 being as good as a piston engine is not enough it's got to be superior and if for new technology succeeded it can't be equal it's got to be greater whoo I do it the great advantage of this is there's no maintenance but when the engine goes it's gone goes out in a ball yeah no weren't they all this color they were all this color this is turbine bronze but even now when I take people out they feel like the Jetsons you know yeah whenever I said whenever I see these and I saw one other one I think it was Frank Klipsch it right you actually helped him get another engine yeah yeah they're only two of these in private but these look like like something from Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea it's like a you know some sort of prehistoric diving bell or but that's the engine that's the engine right there just to give you an idea when we compare the two turbines you'll see how quiet this one is [Music] and you go let me go seize up that's it and you pull away it needs no warmup no oil to check no fluids to check no cooling system to check there's nothing off you go off you go and that's it that's the beauty of it and probably the greatest Peter really melts the ice on the street - that's you know that's one of the great myths in this talk I mean I wrote an article for awards I think Ward magazine had an article about the turbine and the editor said guy he put in quotes and it melts the asphalt and Burns regret no it doesn't the exhaust coming out of the back of this is cooler than S&S is yelling it's about a hundred twelve hundred and twenty degrees that's about it you can put your hand under there and it's fine because these regenerators used to heat over and over until the heat is exhausted and what goes out the back that's fairly cool but as you can see don't forget it back in 1962 most cars you had a choke pull the choke out let it warm up this you turn the key and you you can nail it and you go and that's it I can't believe you just you just fire it up like that yeah you just turn the key and you go you don't need to touch the fuel don't need to touch the gas pedal now everything about this I mean design-wise say they were you know turbine everything looked like turbines like they even though yeah even look like terms yeah it does it has to be the most accessible styling pod is the rear end I love the rear end the rear ender ender I got cross ply tires and it's got drum brakes I mean don't forget it's 1962 yeah this with the thrusters I mean it yeah yeah it's it's phenomenal but this was the a personal size luxury car what a great rear end yeah oh yeah and the styling is fairly conservative when you look at some of the crazy stylings of the early 60s with the big fins and all this good stuff well not they made like you say fifty-five five prototypes fifty for those consumers but dick dick then crushed well again this is a sometimes the car Canton's get a bad rap like the ev1 if you're gonna go into production with a car you sell a car to the public you have to make par and service is available for that car for seven full years right well you only had 50 cars so and they were afraid that people would buy these pull the jet age and I'll put a Hemi in it yeah it just ruined the purity of the car so back in the day don't forget when this was driving up cars from the 40s was still prevalent on the road yeah you know big high boxy you know hump mobiles and Studebakers and everything else and big big Chevy Fleetwood's and all that kind of stuff so this was really in the future but would people pay twice as much as a Cadillac for this because again it wasn't a supercar it wasn't any faster than a v8 in fact some of the v8s might have been faster the thing it just had was the future and the future is always uncertain for a lot of people I'd rather go you know the last days of all technology are always more reliable than the first days of new technology sure so most people tend to go and but you like turbines you like to race I do like turbines I think they're a lot of fun I just like alternative power plants you know and actually we started to build this car because I thought well there's no way I'm never gonna be able to get with the Chrysler Turbine car so let's build our own build our own and as always happens you know it's like you know meet any women until you get engaged in going you meet so uh let's get married [Music] we call it the echo jet because it's the time we built it biodiesel was pretty hot and we were running it on biodiesel and the idea was you weren't using any fossil fuels you just kind of you drive it wait for the corn to come in and then you know harvest time you drive it again it was sort of a nod to that whole deal I mean that we have what I call my vegan interior there's no animal products no really there anything veggie leather there well yeah well yeah it's it's some it's a synthetic material of the body is carbon fiber the whole thing yeah used a lot of corvette technology here we used zr1 brakes we use Corvette Corvette a arms we have a Corvette 4-speed transaxle we made the transfer case and step down gears because you can't run a stick with turbines it doesn't work right a clutch so it's got an automatic in it and GM the GM styling studios did the styling for any scale it's got a real caddy look to it or guys it does we it was kind of working that we tell them what we want they'd sketch something what you think of this what do you think of that so there are some Cadillac influenced in here and the GM design guys are great and we work with Alcoa Alcoa develop these wheels this is a new kind of alloy I think it's out now but it's interesting because it doesn't dull okay and it doesn't polish it just looks like that all the time you don't have to ever do anything more than hose these wheels off that won't water spot it won't do any of that and these have got you know turbine blades yeah little turbine blow into it here's your exhaust we learned our lesson from the jet bike from Mel tonight yeah now we have it going straight up yeah now is this is this like the Chrysler Turbine and in which case this is not that hot or this is no no this is actually not as sophisticated as the Chrysler Turbine because this is that has a turbine engine that was built for automotive applications this is at a again I don't one of the big helicopters and that's I mean that's it that's that's the jet that you'd see in the helicopters and consequently we're trying to talk to Bose or somebody to come up with a noise canceling system but you're pulling in hundreds of cubic feet of air every second so there's not enough space in here to have filters you just suck everything in so we that's why we use headphones to communicate where it is not that loud but it's pretty long yeah if you're a car enthusiast it's not that loud if you're driving with your wife would you say honey I can't hear ya and is this the intake for the whole thing that's an intake up here yeah that's one intake this is another intake - one on each side here yes that's a lot of air that has to go through some fairly small areas - yeah like that engine it's not a problem it's not don't forget you're open all underneath so yeah you're pulling it every which way yeah and you spent I mean like you said it was like three years or so undeveloped yeah yeah three years doing this and Jim Hall and Bernard and the guys did a great job few things you want to change like this well noisy come clunk solenoid change that as you can see she's all carbon fiber yeah and the folks that mic this off with great they did the dash and everything for and and you had this molded here in this country it's not a place called metal crafters down in Fountain Valley they have an autoclave down there and this body is all one piece it just sort of sits on the chassis can't weigh much no it's pretty light although when you got 70 gallons of fuel it gets heavy does this go through fuel pretty quick it's how many gallons per hours you know you look at it eight gallons maybe nine gallons per hour something like that if you're going down the road and doing 8090 your mileage is okay soon as you stop you need sucking as much fuel is it how's it going 80 or 90 exactly it's totally account and and now that it's all done and everything it is it's functional it's treatable what's everything yeah that's on the road it's a driving car and and all this yeah this kind of Batman why don't we take it out you have this kind of fight crime yeah I mean you know we take it to car shows and things and it's it's fun to kind of build your own car is your Corvette transaxle down there coming off the turbine shaft through a step-down gear like a fairly serious one because it is this is returning it again tens of thousands of our hmm well uh like we take it out let's take it out hey I'm down with that the 15% we introduced fuel [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh sorry accelerating the boat really hard Oh I'm gonna show you the most frightening thing I've ever seen in my rigid camera so until our next meeting remember honor the timeless classics I'm Dennis gage happy motoring

Channel: MyClassicCarTV

Views: 2,906,042

Rating: 4.8071923 out of 5

Keywords: My Classic Car, Classic Car, Dennis Gage, Jay Leno, Jet Car, Automobile (TV Genre), Turbine Power, Turbine Motorcycle, Jet Bike, Jay Leno Jet Bike, Chrysler Turbine Car, Chrysler Jet Car, Jay Leno Jet Car, Jay Leno Eco Jet, Jay Leno Jet Power, 1962 Chrysler Turbine, Jay Leno's Garage, Jay's Garage, Burbank California, Driving Jet Car, Turbine Powered Car, Jay Leno Turbine Power, Jay Leno Turbine Car, Jet Cars, Jet Powered Cars, Turbine Powered Cars

Id: iepnr-Rx4Uw

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2015