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The Chrysler Turbine Car is an experimental two-door hardtop coupe powered by a turbine engine and was manufactured by Chrysler from 1963 to 1964. Italian design studio Carrozzeria Ghia constructed the bodywork, and Chrysler completed the final assembly in Detroit .
Engine compartment of a 1963 Chrysler Turbine automobile. The Chrysler turbine engine is a series of gas turbine engines developed by Chrysler intended to be used in road vehicles. In 1954, Chrysler Corporation disclosed the development and successful road testing of a production model Plymouth sport coupe which was powered by a turbine engine.
However, the cars were withdrawn following Mike Spence's fatal crash while practicing in a Lotus 56, another turbine car. While the official reason for the withdrawal was for safety reasons, they were actually withdrawn because changes in the Indianapolis 500 regulations had limited the ability of turbine-powered cars. [8]
General Motors researched the feasibility of gas turbine engines in cars as early as the 1940s. It was not until the early 1950s that the company began building an actual engine, under the direction of Charles L. McCuen, general manager of General Motors Research Laboratories, [1] with Emmett Conklin leading the project.
The Rover T3 base unit is a gas turbine-powered development mule, developed in the early 1950s by the Rover Company. It was the engineering test car for the 1956 T3 coupé, Rover’s third turbine car. Essentially mechanically identical to the finished coupé, its simple body allowed for the easy change of turbine units and other components.
Chrysler installed an experimental turbine, developed specifically for road vehicles, in a Plymouth. [13] The car used was a standard 1954 Belvedere two-door hardtop. This was the beginning of a decades-long but unsuccessful attempt to develop and market a viable car powered by a turbine engine.
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Fiat was the second car manufacturer, after Rover, to introduce a car propelled by a gas turbine—Fiat touted the Turbina as "the first turbine car built in Continental Europe". The project took a long period of planning, studies began in 1948 and ended with a first track test on 14 April 1954 on the rooftop track of the Lingotto factory. [ 3 ]