Thursday, March 23, 2006

`Chrysler Turbine Car

Can we Turbine the Turbans?
I was fascinated last night to watch [History Channel] the story of Chrysler's almost Turbine-ator of the 1960's.   In a nutshell, the turbine engine had 85% fewer parts, and ran on anything that would burn - including perfume and Scotch. It was faster than any gasoline engined car, but had a slower pick up ( a fatal flaw perhaps in the GTO-Sixties).  Another problem:  the turbine generated so much heat that special engine alloys were required, something that may not be a major factor today.  You can read the story here, but my sense is that this way of sticking a fat weenie up OPEC's  ass is a lot more promising than the hybrids  that all the wrong people are so in love with.  Vrooom-Vroooom
3/23/2006 08:44:00 AM 5 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

...burn scotch? For the love of God man, come to your senses.
MM

3/23/06, 9:45 AM
Rodger the Real King of France said...

Funny, in the narrative that was the same reaction many Chrysler guys had at the time.

3/23/06, 10:01 AM
Ric said...

Wow, I actually got to ride in that thing...

Way back when, the local Chrysler dealership actually got to have one of the prototypes for a couple days. Seeing as how dad was the local advertising agency and the dealer was our next door nieghbor I got to ride with dad around town for about a half hour...

Can't remember if it was that great a car, although the engine sounded neat, but you had to stay way clear of the exhaust because of the heat...

Off course gas was 2 galllons for a quarter and we had real service stations on every third corner then so fuel economey wasn't a big selling point...

3/23/06, 10:22 AM
Anonymous said...

Turbines have terrible throttle lag. It can take a second or two to speed up after you push the accelerator and take a second or two to slow down when you release the throttle. I don't think that variable speed turbines have a future in cars.

But what if you used a constant speed turbine in a hybrid? You could get the economy benefits of the turbine and not deal with the drivability problems.

I don't know of anyone is working on that though.

3/23/06, 4:50 PM
Anonymous said...

'Sides -- the dashboards are Soooo Kewl!!

3/24/06, 10:36 AM

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