Many cars of the 50s are designed after jet aircraft, so why not make them go like jets? At least I assume that was Chrysler’s thought process. Their turbine car program lasted for 20 years and while it had no tangible benefits, it’s still a fascinating curiousity.
The prospect of using a gas turbine engine to drive a car offered many advantages from Chrysler’s standpoint. From Allpar:
- Maintenance is considerably reduced
- Engine life-expectancy is much longer
- Development potential is remarkable
- The number of parts is reduced 80%
- Tuning-up is almost eliminated
- Low-temperature starting difficulties are eliminated
- No warm-up period is necessary
- Antifreeze is not needed
- Instant heat is available in the winter
- The engine will not stall with sudden overloading
- Engine operation is vibration-free
- Operates on wide variety of fuels
- Oil consumption is negligible
- Engine weight is reduced
Problems were poor fuel economy, slow throttle response, and excessive nitrous oxide emissions.
This video, starting at 7:42, has a great explanation for how the engine worked
Chrysler was not the only automaker to experiment with this, both GM and Ford did so, as did Fiat and Rover. But Chrysler was the company that put the most effort into it. Part of the reason was that Chrysler was a major defense contractor, so it offered some synergy.
The first Chrysler turbine car was a 1954 Plymouth Belvedere. The engine only made 100 hp, took a long time to spool up, and offered no engine braking.
The second generation came in 1956. There’s a myth that Chrysler turbine cars would melt the asphalt and it’s completely not true. As the gentleman above demonstrates by having his hand right behind the exhaust, it was actually cooler than on a normal car. The reason was a ceramic heat exchanger that harnessed the exhaust heat to warm up the incoming air. This reduced exhaust temperatures dramatically and greatly increased fuel economy. This was the first turbine car to be driven cross country, starting at the Chrysler Building (Where else?) in New York and finishing 3000 miles later at City Hall in Los Angeles. Fuel economy averaged 13 mpg, that was very bad even in those days.
The 3rd generation engine arrived in 1960. Two modified cars, the Plymouth Turbo Fury and the Dodge Turbo Dart, successfully travelled across the country and got fuel economy that was comparable or better than normal piston cars. This version of the engine, known as CR2A, included a variable nozzle system which optimized performance and efficiency. Throttle lag fell from 7 seconds with the first turbine to just 1.5 with this.
Now we come to the most famous. Chrysler chose to put the 4th generation turbine engine into its own unique body, designed by Ghia of Italy. It was simply known as the Chrysler Turbine Car. 50 of them were built in 1962 and would be distributed to 200 motorists on a rotating basis to gauge reaction. All of them were painted “Turbine Orange” and featured whitewall tires, power steering, air conditioning, and a modified Torqueflite automatic transmission. The engine produced 130 horsepower and a much more exciting 425 lb ft of torque.
The results were disappointing. Drivers did not like the slow acceleration time of 14 seconds, the high noise levels, and the complicated starting procedure. Drivers at the time were accustomed to running the engine at full throttle, to warm it up, in their normal cars. But in the Turbine, there was no need to warm up and in fact, stepping on the gas before the engine was up to speed would damage it. Chrysler warned its test consumers about this but realized how bad people are about listening to instructions, so they included a feature that shut off the engine if drivers tried flooring it before the turbine was up to speed. There was another problem, while the Turbine could run on anything, even tequila, the one fuel it didn’t handle so well happened to be by far the most common at the time, leaded gasoline. The lead would leave deposits on the blades and was not recommended.
In the end, most of the turbine cars were scrapped. The remaining ones are in museums, and naturally, Jay Leno has one.
Chrysler continued to tinker with the turbine into the 1970s. When Mopar had to be bailed out by Congress, one of the conditions was $2 billion in cutbacks. This meant many R&D projects were put on the chopping block, the turbine included. In the end, the only production vehicle to use a Chrysler turbine engine would the Abrams M1 tank.
There have been many turbine powered concepts since, such as the Jaguar C-X75 pictured. But there’s a simple reason why turbine powered cars are not practical. Obviously there needs to be a little space between the ends of the blades and the engine walls. The air that escapes through that is wasted energy. In big turbines, the types used by airliners and power stations, these losses are not too bad, but as you get smaller, the losses become relatively bigger, this provides an inherent efficiency disadvantage over piston engines. Turbines also see a much bigger drop-off in efficiency at part throttle than do piston engines, they don’t like being run at varying speeds. This is the real reason we don’t have jet powered cars, and we should thank Chrysler for all the money they spent to find this out.