Rick Cook wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:
Rick Cook wrote:


J. Clarke wrote:

Badger wrote:



J. Clarke wrote:


Of course you can. This is nothing new. In 1963 a bunch of people
were driving around in gas turbine powered Chryslers, that could run
on just about anything including whiskey and perfume (both were
demonstrated).

Typical Americans, late again, Rover had a jet engined car in 1950.....


That mothers were using to drive their kids to school? The Chrysler
wasn't a prototype, it was a production car.



Niel ;-)


Since they only built about 50 of them and never sold any, I don't think
the term 'production' applies.


They were in the hands of ordinary citizens and driven daily for several
years and there are in fact still several of them in private hands. They
were as much "production cars" as some models of Ferrari.

How did they end up in private hands? GM didn't sell them

No, GM didn't sell them. GM didn't make them either. They were _CHRYSLER_
products, not General Motors.

and I thought
they destroyed them all after the program ended. sob! If any of them
still exist I'd love to see one again.

Forty were destroyed--apparently it was some kind of tax thing--remember
that the bodywork was limited production from Ghia and the taxes might have
been substantial. That left ten--two belong to Chrysler, the remainder
were all sent to various museums, some of which subsequently sold them.
According to http://www.turbinecar.com/where.htm four of them are
currently in driveable condition including one of ones at Chrysler and one
that is privately held. And I'm annoyed with myself--I grew up in a small
town in Florida and moved out as soon as I could. According to one site I
visited there was a concours held in that town a while back and by golly
somebody drove up in a Chrysler turbine.

BTW: I think you're wrong about the Ferrari. IIRC they had to produce a
minimum number, something like a hundred, to qualify for GT racing. The
Formula Ones and such were a different matter, of course.

Don't know the current rule but at one time it was 25. Ford had to do the
same with the Ford GT--I used to have a brochure for the homologation
version, which had power steering and air conditioning. But they wanted
something like $35K for it, which in the early '60s was a Hell of a lot of
money.

So how may Rovers were in private hands, ever?

None, of course. Those were purely experimental, like some of the
'turbine cars' a few people built in the 60s using military surplus
turbines.

Seems to me then that Chrysler has done a better job all around--they've
managed to get at least one guy on the road with a privately owned
Chrysler-built turbine car.

--RC

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)