Aviation and the automotive industry are often linked. When you see the XP-21 Firebird I, you can’t help but notice that association. Not only does its appearance resemble that of a fighter jet, the power source also resembles it a lot. However, the gas turbine has never been able to find its way to mass production.
It looks like it came straight out of a comic book, the XP-21 Firebird I. Remove the four wheels and you have a jet fighter. Thanks to its pointed tip at the front, the wings and tail fin and the ‘canopy’, it looks extremely streamlined. The body is made of fiberglass reinforced plastic, which means that the Firebird I only weighs 1,134 kilos. The rear wheels are hidden under the wings, resulting in two bumps. Its eccentric appearance already reveals it: the Firebird I was never intended as a production model. General Motors mainly wanted to see if the gas turbine could be used as an efficient power source for future cars.
The Firebird I.
Behind the driver was a gas turbine, the ‘Whirlfire Turbo-Power’. The difference with an airplane is that the turbine drives the rear wheels directly, instead of the exhaust gases generating thrust. The turbine delivered a power of 370 horsepower at 13,000 rpm. In 1953 that number was already quite impressive. However, the prototype never went faster than 160 km/h. The gas turbine had two gears, so the Firebird I had more to offer. When test driver Emmet Conklin switched to second gear, he only had so much wheel spin that he decided not to accelerate any further. The power of the turbine was too much for the relatively thin rear tires.
The Firebird 1 wasn’t the only turbine-powered concept car developed by GM. Later, the Firebird II, III and IV appeared successively. They all looked outlandish, but they were not as obviously connected to aviation as the I. Over time, GM continued to develop the turbine concept, but after the Firebird III from 1959, the company abandoned the turbine drive. The Firebird IV from 1974 was an empty shell without a power source.
For the consumer?
Chrysler continued with turbine technology in the 1960s. The history of Chrysler and turbines goes back further, because the car manufacturer already started with them in the late 1930s. Chrysler initially wanted to focus on aviation, but in the 1950s engineers installed a turbine in a Plymouth Belvedere. Testing continued and eventually chief engineer George Huebner drove a turbine car from New York to Los Angeles, a distance of 4,860 kilometers. Thanks in part to this successful long-distance test – more followed later – Chrysler saw potential in the turbine. In the 1960s, this led to a small-scale production of the Turbine Car.
Chrysler Turbine Car.
The silhouette of the Turbine Car is typical of the 1960s. The main landmarks of the special car are the two round headlights and the large grille with horizontal bars. At the rear, two large exhausts from the turbines take pride of place next to the rear lights. All 55 Turbine Cars produced are painted in the same color: Turbine Bronze. The turbine itself was good for 130 hp and 576 Nm of torque. The relatively high torque is particularly striking on the turbine. When the Turbine Car is idling, the speed is between a bizarrely high 18,000 and 22,000 rpm. At 120 km/h, the turbine rotates at its maximum speed of 60,000 revolutions per minute.
As part of the test program, Chrysler lent 50 Turbine Cars to the public. With this, the car manufacturer wanted to study whether the turbine was really something that the consumer could use. That turned out not to be the case in the end. Although the participants in the test program collectively put over 1.6 million kilometers on the clock, their feedback included that the eight-step starting procedure was far too complex, that the car made a lot of noise and burned a lot of fuel. The acceleration was also nothing to write home about.
Thanks in part to this feedback and the fact that the turbine was extremely expensive to produce, Chrysler decided to end the program and destroy most of the Turbine Cars. 46 copies ended up on the scrap heap, which means that only nine Turbine Cars are left today. Although the jet propulsion for passenger cars was largely taken to the eternal hunting grounds, Chrysler’s testing program pushed it close to the production stage.
Other attempts
Not only in America did car manufacturers experiment with turbines. The concept was also extensively researched in Europe. As early as 1950, Rover started working on it and came up with the JET1, a two-seater with a gas turbine. With this prototype, the manufacturer set a speed record for cars with a gas turbine in 1952: 244 km/h. In the 1960s, Rover teamed up with British Racing Motors (BRM) to develop a gas turbine racing car. The Rover-BRM eventually successfully participated in Le Mans. In the 1950s, Fiat was also working on a car with a gas turbine: the Fiat Turbina (photo 8) with 300 hp. However, Fiat eventually discontinued testing due to fuel consumption and overheating issues.
The Rover JET1.
In addition to Fiat, Renault was also working on the gas turbine. However, Renault wanted more: with the Étoile Filante (photo 14), the French tried to break the world speed record for cars with a gas turbine. He succeeded: on the salt flats of Bonneville he clocked 307.4 km/h. Renault left it at this and did not further develop the gas turbine for passenger cars. That is actually the recurring theme for the gas turbine. On paper it seems like a very interesting idea and in practice it works, but there are too many drawbacks to it to go into production.
Does that mean the gas turbine is dead and buried? Not, because the idea has cropped up a few more times in the 21st century. In 2006, talk show host and car collector Jay Leno presented the special EcoJet: a supercar with a 650 hp gas turbine that runs on biodiesel. A more serious attempt came from Jaguar’s camp in the form of the C-X75. Two micro gas turbines in the hypercar supply power to four electric motors, each with a capacity of 195 hp, bringing the total to a not-negligible 780 hp. However, Jaguar left the gas turbines for the final version and a production version of the C-X75 never came. Who’s next with a gas turbine?
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl