The Chrysler Turbine Car

Posted on Apr 22, 2014 in Antique | Comments Off on The Chrysler Turbine Car

One of my favorite cars of the “future” was the Chrysler Turbine car, produced in 1963. 55 units were built as a test of gas turbine engines, and now only two remain in private hands. Jay Leno is one of the lucky few, and he recently created a video showing the car and its history. The video is about 25 miutes long, but it is an excellent view.

LINK: Jay Leno’s Chrysler Turbine Car

Photo courtesy of Richard Truesdell/automotivetraveler.com

The Turbine car represented the future. I remember seeing it in some magazine when I was young, and thinking it was beautiful. Of course back the we had no way of hearing what it sounded like, since we had no internet. But I imagined it was like a jet plane, and I was pretty close. The Turbine was a great design… impractical, but still very stylish. It’s too bad they never made a real production version, and equally bad the body design wasn’t copied.

One of the sad things about test cars is that they are sometimes destroyed once the test is over. 46 of these cars were crushed, a situation that was duplicated with the General Motors EV1. Worse yet, some of the crushing was captured on film. Here is a small look at their demise. Be warned, this is hard to watch.