Chrysler Turbine Car
| Chrysler | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Turbine car | |
| Presentation year: | 1963 |
| Vehicle fair: | |
| Class : | Sports car |
| Body shape : | Coupe |
| Engine: |
Gas turbine : 96 kW |
| Length: | 5120 mm |
| Width: | 1851 mm |
| Height: | 1359 mm |
| Wheelbase: | 2794 mm |
| Empty weight: | 1769 kg |
| Production model: | none |
The Chrysler Turbine Car was a passenger car made by the American manufacturer Chrysler . The car was powered by a gas turbine. Chrysler she made in a small factory in Detroit in 1963 for the sole consumer test of a car with turbine drive . This was the climax of Chrysler's decades of attempts to build an everyday car with this type of drive.
prehistory
Towards the end of the Second World War , Chrysler began the first studies for new gas turbine concepts . In 1945 the US Navy commissioned the company to develop and manufacture a turboprop engine for aircraft . In the early 1950s, the first gas turbines for passenger cars were tested and installed in test vehicles. After a successful road test, Chrysler presented a turbine-powered Plymouth sports coupe as a test vehicle to the public in 1954 . Further attempts were promising. Materials and production technologies, however, presented major challenges. At the beginning of the 1960s, suitable metals that could be produced inexpensively and conventionally processed had been developed. Various test vehicles with what is now the third generation of the gas turbine were presented, which caused quite a stir. Further intensive road tests were successful.
In early 1962, Chrysler announced a small series of 50 to 75 test vehicles that were to be given to selected drivers for evaluation at the end of 1963 .
Chrysler Turbine Car
Drive unit
The gas turbine from 1963, the fourth generation of the Chrysler gas turbine, achieved an output of 130 bhp (96 kW) at 3,600 rpm on the drive shaft and delivered a torque of 576 Nm when the vehicle was stationary , which means an acceleration from 0 to 100 km / h in 12 seconds at an outside temperature of 29.5 ° C - at low temperatures the power output was even higher due to the greater air density.
The maximum speed of the turbine shaft was 45,700 / min, which resulted in a speed of the drive shaft of 5360 / min. The turbine consisted of a single-stage radial compressor , a combustion chamber and a two-stage axial turbine , with the first stage driving the compressor. The mechanically separated second stage was connected directly to a standard Chrysler "TorqueFlite" automatic transmission via a reduction gear; the hydraulic torque converter common in piston engine drives was not required due to the free flow of gases. For adaptation to load conditions and to avoid excessive speeds in engine braking that were vanes of the second turbine stage adjustable. Two rotating countercurrent heat exchangers (recuperators) recovered heat from the exhaust gases and heated the compressed air before combustion, which greatly reduced fuel consumption. The turbine shafts ran in inexpensive plain bearings .
As fuel was diesel fuel , unleaded gasoline , kerosene , JP-4 jet fuel and even vegetable oil suitable. The gas turbine would have run on any liquid fuel, and the President of Mexico Adolfo López Mateos - successfully - operated one of the first cars with tequila . To switch from one fuel to the other, no adjustment had to be made; a mixture of different fuels was also possible.
The turbine had only a fifth of the moving parts of a piston engine (60 instead of 300) and thus an expected lower susceptibility to failure. It had neither an ignition distributor nor breaker contacts , only a spark plug for starting, no coolant circuit , and - since no combustion residues got into the oil circuit - no oil change was necessary. The maintenance effort was thus also lower than with a conventional drive. Even without a catalyst, the exhaust gases contained no carbon monoxide (CO), no hydrocarbons and no unburned carbon (soot). However, the turbine produced large amounts of nitrogen oxides (NO x ); reduction became an ongoing problem with the program.
Design and manufacture
The car itself was designed in Chrysler's workshops under the direction of Elwood Engel , who had previously worked as a designer at Ford for 14 years. The designer responsible for the vehicle's appearance was Charles Mashigan , who also drew a 2-seater show car called Typhoon , which was shown at the 1964 World's Fair in New York . Engel used a number of previous Ford styling details. The assembly with taillights and rear bumper was taken directly (with improvements) from a 1956 Ford styling study called Galaxia . However , no elements were adopted from the modern design of the 1964 Imperial , which was also designed by Engel .
The turbine car was a two-door hardtop - coupe with four individual seats, power steering , brake servo and electric window lifts . The most striking design details included the two large horizontal taillights as well as the reversing lights, which were integrated into the heavily contoured, chrome-plated rear bumper. At the front, two individual main headlights were mounted in chrome-plated rings with a "turbine design", which resulted in an accentuated appearance. This design theme extended from the center console to the hubcaps . Even the tires were specially made with small stylized turbine blades in the whitewall . The cars were painted in red-brown "Frostfire Metallic", later called "Turbinenbronze", which from then on was also available for other series production models. The roof was covered with black vinyl , the interior was made of bronze-colored English calfskin. There were also bronze-colored plush carpets .
The dashboard was illuminated by means of electroluminescent displays in the instrument panel and a display strip across its entire width. The system did not use an incandescent lamp , but an inverter with a transformer generated over 100 V alternating current from the voltage of the car battery , which was passed through special plastic layers, which then made the displays shine in blue-green light.
The bodies and interior fittings were made by Ghia in Italy . The completed bodies were then transported to Detroit and completed there with the gas turbine, transmission and electrical components. By October 1964 - in addition to 5 prototypes - 50 vehicles had been completed and delivered to selected test drivers .
Test process
203 ordinary drivers were selected from 30,000 applicants . Each driver was given a copy of the Chrysler Turbine free of charge for up to three months. In January 1966, the program was completed after a total of around 1.8 million test kilometers. The low downtime of only 4% over the entire test duration should be emphasized.
Delayed throttle response and high exhaust temperatures when idling were shortcomings of the first models. The combined starter / generator did not work properly at high altitudes and if the required starting procedure was not followed exactly, the turbine could die. Chrysler was able to fix or mitigate most of the errors, increasing operational readiness from an initial 96% to 99%. Delayed acceleration and high fuel consumption (16-17 l / 100 km), however, remained a problem. The drivers appreciated the smooth, vibration-free run, whereas customers, who were more used to the sound of a large V8 engine , complained that the drive sounded like a large vacuum cleaner . Overall, the vehicle was well received - the technical problems that occurred were comparatively minor in view of the degree of innovation in this experiment.
The whereabouts of the test car
A total of 55 turbine cars were produced. When Chrysler finished its customer testing program and other public demonstrations of the car, 46 of them were destroyed to avoid the high import duties on the Italian-made bodies. Of the remaining nine, six were given to museums across the country after the gas turbines were taken out of service. Chrysler itself kept three of them in working order for historical reasons. One of them is kept in working condition on the Chrysler test track, one was bought by the museum of the private car collector Frank Kleptz in Terre Haute and also works today. The last of the mentioned vehicles belonging to the Transport Museum in St. Louis , was u. a. Photographed for Mopar Action magazine and appears from time to time at motor shows across the United States. An owner of a no longer functional copy contacted Chrysler CEO Robert Lutz , who then sent a spare part with which the car could be put back into operation. A total of four out of nine cars still in existence are in running order today. One of them belongs to the automobile collection of the TV entertainer Jay Leno.
Follow-up developments
The turbine vehicle program did not die entirely at Chrysler. The design for a new coupé , which was intended as the body for a new generation of the turbine drive, became the 1966 Dodge Charger . Chrysler continued the development of the drive with a sixth generation of the gas turbine, which met the new NO x regulations , and built it into the 1966 Dodge Coronet , which was never shown publicly in this form. A smaller, lighter seventh generation was manufactured in the early 1970s because the company received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for further development. In 1977, a specially designed Chrysler LeBaron with a gas turbine was created as a forerunner of series production. At the time, however, the company was in a difficult financial position and the US government had to take out a guarantee . A condition of this contract was the discontinuation of the series production of gas turbines, as it was considered "too risky", which gave rise to many conspiracy theories.
literature
- Chrysler Corporation: History of Chrysler Corporation Gas Turbine Vehicles, 1979 ( PDF )
- Chrysler Corporation Engineering Staff: The Chrysler Corporation Turbine Car, 1963 ( PDF )
Web links
- "Chrysler turbine engines and cars" at allpar.com (English)
- "Chrysler turbine program history from a user's view" at turbinecar.com (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 1964 Chrysler Turbine Car - Road Test - Motor Trend Classic. July 21, 2006, Retrieved August 9, 2016 (American English).
- ↑ http://www.usatoday.com/story/driveon/2013/06/22/jay-leno-chrysler-turbine/2444935/