Chrysler Turbine Car 1963

by

Model number: LDC92448ORMT

Review of the model:

Hello we come from Chrysler Corporation and we like you to lend our latest invention: The Chrysler Turbine Car! -That’s was not the literary words presented for the lucky ones, who for sure could not believe there own ears. Nevertheless, it was the totally troth back in 1963. Model car collectors, are lucky in another way! We can own a scale replica for little money thanks to Lucky Die-Cast from the Yatming group.

When I started to collect 1:18 model cars the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car had been on the market for a while, and the model had became harder to find at dealers here in Europe. But fortunately the model was rereleased in a new batch with new box design lately. So now we all can enjoy the “Bronze car icon” again. The model sells for between 35 to 45 Euros here EU. So how well is it made and how accurate dose it stands compared to the real car? I have not seen the real car (Yet) but can only give a fair judgment with articles and pictures from the net. However I will be confident in my net research to give precise and objective review of this model.

The first thing that strike one, when we unpack the box – is the fantastic color this model car have Metallic Bronze with black vinyl roof and added with classy chrome trims and realistic glass looking plastic parts. Now you can already imagine you a picture where this review will turn out!

Let’s start above and talk about the roof. Many model cars that have vinyl roof cover will only have black painted Vinyl. But this model has texture incorporated in the plastic casting! That gives the roof a very realistic feeling to the model.

Lucky Die-cast models have always fine window quality plastic parts, and this is also present in this chase – Clear windows with minimal distortions give a realistic looking model car. Remember to add to the equation, always delicate chrome trims wrap around the windows (Not painted silver as seen on models 4 to 5 time the amount this model cost)

There are a special feature with this car; It only come in one color scheme, due to the fact all Turbine Cars came in this marvelous Bronze color. That looks like a piece of wood that have a ton of varnish carefully laid on top of the body. Lucky Die-Cast as on all of the newly released models have impeccable paint work with no flaws what so ever – In other words, this model is perfect regarding the paint, fitting of parts and chrome. The real car has emblems in front, back and on fenders. They are well made on the model and protected by varnish.

Are there any wrong painted parts and parts that should have paint applied?
Oh yes – This will always be the case in this budget segment. But we can add the missing details easily on models from this producer. This is a matter of taste, one can choose to ignore the small issues - or as I (A keen model builder who enjoy the task) to research and upgrade the appearance of the model.

If we start with the front of the car, the grill and bezels around the headlight lenses need a bit of black paint to enhance the contours of the moldings. The directional lamps under the headlights in the bumper need orange paint. Up on the hood the outstanding ornament resident proudly but need some turquoise paint on the base.
If we look at the car in profile, the front fender gills need some black paint too. But the most obvious alternation were on the wheels, as they had the color scheme/chrome trims a bit wrong, but it was easily corrected by paint and the Liquid Chrome pen from Molotow.

Open the door and have a peek inside the interior. This part is very well made (as usual) but need some chrome trim and silver paint (So the model has to be disassembled to get access to the interior). Further back on the rear end of the model, the only modification was two small reflex lenses glued to the center of the fake turbine ends. All in all not too hard a task considered when we look at the result. The model have doors, hood and deck lid that can be opened. The fitting and lack of gab on the parts shows how fine the die-cast parts are molded.

If you collect US-model cars as I, you have to have a Turbine car from Chrysler with glorious details and realistic parts. Otherwise you collection will not be complete.

This is one of the better models from Lucky Die-Cast and I can highly recommend this model to you!

I will give this model 4 out of 6 stars  ******

Below here are pictures of the model, historical description, old brochures, technical data and some movie clips for the real car. So please enjoy!

History:

The Chrysler Turbine Car is an automobile powered by a turbine engine which was produced by Chrysler from 1962 to 1964. Its body was made by the Italian design studio Ghia, and Chrysler completed its assembly in Detroit. The Chrysler turbine engine program that produced the Turbine Car began during the late 1930s, and created multiple prototypes that successfully completed numerous long-distance trips in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The A-831 engines that powered the Ghia-designed Turbine Car could operate on many different fuels, required less maintenance, and lasted longer than conventional piston engines, although they were much more expensive to produce. A total of 55 cars were built: five prototypes and a limited run of 50 cars for a public user program. The car's design was created by Elwood Engel and the Chrysler studios. A two-door hardtop coupe, it featured power brakes, power steering, and a TorqueFlite transmission, and was coated with a metallic, root beer-colored paint known as "turbine bronze".

After testing, Chrysler conducted a user program from September 1964 to January 1966 that involved 203 individual drivers in 133 different cities across the United States cumulatively driving more than one million miles (1.6 million km). The program helped the company determine a variety of problems with the cars, notably with their complicated starting procedure, relatively unimpressive acceleration, and sub-par fuel economy and noise level. The experience also revealed key advantages of the turbine engines, including their remarkable durability, smooth operation, and relatively modest maintenance requirements.

After the conclusion of the user program in 1966, Chrysler reclaimed all of the cars and destroyed all but nine of them; Chrysler kept two cars, five are displayed at museums in the United States, and two are in private collections. Chrysler's turbine engine program ultimately ended in 1979, largely due to the failure of the engines to meet government emissions regulations, relatively poor fuel economy, and as a prerequisite of receiving a government loan in 1979.

Background
Chrysler began researching turbine engines during the late 1930s, initially for aviation applications and primarily led by executive engineer George Huebner; Huebner was part of a group of engineers who began exploring the idea of powering a car with a turbine after World War II. Other members of the secretive Chrysler research team which worked on automotive turbines included fellow engineers Bud Mann and Sam B. Williams. The concept intrigued them, largely because turbine engines have fewer moving parts than their piston-powered counterparts and can run on a variety of fuels. According to historian Charles K. Hyde, by the mid-1950s Chrysler "led the way in terms of gas turbine research" (although General Motors and Rover also built operational turbine cars after World War II).

After improving their turbine design, most notably by engineering a regenerator to resolve an issue with heat exchange, the Chrysler team's efforts reached early maturity when they mated a turbine to an otherwise-stock 1954 Plymouth Belvedere. Heating and cooling and emissions and exhaust were among the principal engineering challenges which faced the turbine engine. Chrysler tested the Belvedere, claiming that its turbine engine contained 20 percent fewer parts and weighed 200 pounds (91 kg) less than comparable, conventional piston engines. On June 16, 1954, the company publicly unveiled the turbine-powered Belvedere at its Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, in front of over 500 reporters.

Chrysler unveiled its next turbine car, a 1956 Plymouth, on March 23, 1956; Huebner drove it 3,020 miles (4,860 km) on a four-day trip from New York City to Los Angeles. Although the car was shadowed by a 14-person convoy of mechanics with fuel and spare parts, it only required two minor repairs on the trip (neither of which were engine-related). The coast-to-coast journey's success led Chrysler to double the size of its turbine program and move it from Highland Park, Michigan, to a larger facility on Greenfield Road in Detroit.

The program began generating a number of patent applications in 1957, due largely to the contributions of metallurgist Amedee Roy and engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi. The next iteration of the Chrysler turbine engine (the second-generation engine) was placed into a 1959 Plymouth, which averaged 19.4 miles per US gallon (12.1 L/100 km; 23.3 mpg‑imp) on a trip from Detroit to Woodbridge, New Jersey. This mileage was substantially higher than the 13 mpg‑US (18 L/100 km; 16 mpg‑imp) achieved with the first-generation turbine on the 1956 New York-to-Los Angeles journey.

After Chrysler named former accountant Lynn Townsend its new president in 1961, the company unveiled its next, third-generation turbine engine on February 28; the CR2A was the first Chrysler turbine engine to be officially named. Unlike its more-experimental predecessors, the CR2A was designed with an eye on costs and production methods. While the engine was under development in May 1960, Huebner said that it would serve as its own torque converter, generate 140 horsepower (100 kW), have an acceleration lag of 1.5 seconds (compared with nine seconds for its predecessor), and weigh 450 lb (200 kg)—150 lb (68 kg) less than a comparably sized piston engine.

Third-generation turbines were mated to a variety of vehicles, including a 2.5-ton 1960 Dodge truck and the Chrysler Turboflite concept car. Refined CR2A turbines were installed into a 1962 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Fury; the Dart was driven from New York City to Los Angeles in December 1961, and the Fury completed a journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco in January 1962. After Huebner arrived in Los Angeles with the Dart, he spent two hours giving journalists rides in the turbine-powered car.

Chrysler had barnstormed its fleet of turbine cars to dealers across North America, Europe and Mexico by February 1962, visiting 90 cities, giving rides to almost 14,000 people, and being seen by millions more. The third-generation turbine program ended at the 1962 Chicago Auto Show that month, where the company displayed its turbine-powered fleet. Shortly before the show Chrysler announced an upcoming fourth-generation turbine engine it planned to install in a limited run of 50–75 cars which would be loaned to the public at no cost in late 1963, a decision largely due to enthusiastic public response to the barnstorming tour.

Engine
Exploded view of the A-831 turbine engine at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum
The Chrysler Turbine Car is powered by the A-831, Chrysler's fourth-generation turbine engine. The most notable difference from its predecessor, the CR2A, was its use of twin regenerators (one mounted on either side of the gasifier) instead of a single top cover-mounted heat exchanger. This design helped the A-831 trim 40 pounds (18 kg) from the CR2A's weight, reducing it to a relatively-light 410 pounds (190 kg). Huebner described the turbine as similar to a jet engine, noting that it had only one spark plug and about 80 percent fewer parts than a typical automotive piston engine. Due to their construction, the engines did not require antifreeze, a cooling system, a radiator, connecting rods, or crankshafts.

The A-831 could operate on diesel fuel, unleaded gasoline, kerosene, and JP-4 jet fuel; leaded gasoline damaged it. According to Chrysler, it could burn a variety of unusual fuels ranging from furnace oil and perfume to peanut and soybean oils. Mexican president Adolfo López Mateos ran one of the cars on tequila after Chrysler engineers confirmed that it would do so.

The engine produced 130 brake horsepower (97 kW) at 36,000 revolutions per minute (rpm), 425 pound-feet (576 Nm) of torque, and idled between 18,000 and 22,000 rpm. At idle, its exhaust did not exceed 180 °F (82 °C). When driven at 120 mph (190 km/h), the turbine ran at its maximum of 60,000 rpm. The A-831's compressor had a pressure ratio of 4:1 and an efficiency of 80 percent; its combustor operated at 95 percent efficiency.

Compared to conventional piston engines, turbine engines generally require less maintenance, last longer, and start more easily in cold conditions; the A-831 started properly at temperatures as low as −20 °F (−29 °C). The first car to receive an A-831 was a Plymouth Fury. In this Ghia-built turbine car, the engine had a 0-to-60 mph (97 km/h) time of about 12 seconds. Due to the exotic materials and strict tolerances needed to build the engines and the investment casting method with which they were made, the A-831s were very expensive to produce; Chrysler never disclosed their actual cost.

Design
The Turbine Car was designed in the Chrysler studios under the direction of Elwood Engel, who had worked for the Ford Motor Company before moving to Chrysler. Due to its resemblance to the Engel-designed Ford Thunderbird, the car is occasionally called the "Englebird". According to Huebner, the design was intended to compete with the Chevrolet Corvette in addition to the Thunderbird.

The car's bodies were handmade by Italian design studio Ghia, which had built a number of concept cars for Chrysler (including an Imperial limousine and the Norseman). The mostly completed Turbine Car bodies, which were assembled, painted, trimmed, and upholstered by Ghia in Italy, were shipped to Chrysler's Greenfield Road turbine facility in Detroit for final assembly; this consisted of installing the turbine engines, TorqueFlite transmissions, electrical wiring, and components such as radios and heaters. Building an individual car may have cost as much as between $50,000 to $55,000 (equivalent to $434,000 in 2017); Virgil Exner, Jr., estimates that the bodies themselves cost about $20,000 (equivalent to $158,000 in 2017), although Chrysler never revealed the cost of each turbine engine.

The first five cars were completed in early 1962 as prototypes used for troubleshooting; each was slightly different from the others, varying in exterior color, interior upholstery, and roof material. Early problems discovered from the prototypes included sluggish acceleration (attributed in part to the relatively heavy hand-built bodies) and vibration, ultimately determined to be caused by the tire treads and noticeable due to the unusual smoothness of the turbine engine.

A total of 50 identical Turbine Cars were built between October 1963 and October 1964.They was all two-door hardtop coupes, with air-over-oil power brakes and power steering. The cars had independent front suspension with a coil spring at each front wheel, eschewing Chrysler's contemporary-standard independent front longitudinal torsion bar system (although their rear suspension utilized off-the-shelf leaf springs). All four wheels were equipped with power-assisted drum brakes.

The Turbine Car interior
The car body is finished in a metallic, root beer-colored paint known as "turbine bronze". Its headlights, deeply-recessed taillights, turn signals, and pod-shaped backup lights are mounted in chrome bezels. The turbine-inspired style carries through to the center console design of the interior, which has bronze-colored leather upholstery, deep-pile bronze carpet, and brushed aluminum accents. The cars have black vinyl hardtop roofs, leather-upholstered bucket seats, and whitewall tires.

The Turbine Car's dashboard is dominated by three large gauges: a speedometer, a tachometer, and pyrometer, the latter monitoring the temperature of the turbine inlet (the engine's hottest component). Its appearance is mostly stock, although the tachometer and pyrometer display abnormally high readings compared to piston-engine cars: 46,000 rpm and 1,700 °F (930 °C), respectively. All 55 turbine cars had identical ignition keys.

User program
Two of the cars gave rides to visitors at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and another went on a worldwide tour; 50 were lent to the general public as part of a user program. The cars were given to drivers for a three-month period at no charge, aside from fuel costs; participants also gave Chrysler in-depth interviews within two weeks of returning their cars. During the user program, which ran from September 1964 to January 1966, the cars' operational downtime was reduced from four percent early on to one percent by its conclusion.

The user program helped identify a variety of problems with the cars, including starter malfunction at high altitudes, difficulty in mastering the unusual eight-step starting procedure (which, for some users, resulted in engine damage), and the cars' relatively unimpressive acceleration. Nonetheless, the turbine engines were remarkably durable in comparison to contemporary piston engines. The most-cited advantages of the turbine engine, according to the participants' interviews, were its smooth and vibration-free operation, reduced maintenance requirements, and ease of starting in different conditions; the most-common complaints concerned its slow acceleration, sub-par fuel economy, and relatively high noise level. Investigating the latter complaint, Chrysler found that the distinctive sound of the car's turbine (reminiscent of a jet engine) was positively received by about 60 percent of those involved in the user program and disliked by about 20 percent of their fellow users.

The cars had conspicuous warning labels cautioning drivers to avoid using leaded gasoline; although the turbine engine could run on it, the lead additive left debilitating deposits in it. The only fuel which Chrysler recommended not be used, it was by far the easiest to obtain during the user program. Fuels commonly used by those participating in the user program included diesel and home heating oil.

More than 1 million miles (1.6 million km) were accumulated in testing by the 50 cars given to the public, which were driven by 203 users before the program ended in January 1966. The users lived in 133 cities in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C.; 180 were male and 23 were female, their ages ranged from 21 to 70, and 60 percent were Chrysler owners.

Legacy
In April 1966, product planning and development vice president Harry E. Chesebrough noted that the 50 test cars would be taken off the road regardless of whether the Chrysler Turbine Car went into production. Chrysler destroyed 46 of the cars after it finished the user program and other public displays. Forty-five of the cars were burned and crushed at a scrap yard south of Detroit, and the other was destroyed at Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds. A widely circulated explanation was that the cars were destroyed to avoid a substantial tariff on the imported Ghia bodies, although author Steve Lehto claims that this has been "largely discredited". The destruction of the cars was in line with the automobile industry's practice of not selling non-production or prototype cars to the public. According to Lehto, the decision was influenced by Chrysler's public relations concerns: the potential difficulty of keeping the cars running and fears that owners would replace the turbine powerplants with piston engines. A Chrysler executive was quoted in Look: "Our main objective is research, and we did not want turbines turning up on used-car lots." A similar practice was later used by General Motors with its EV1 when it terminated the program and destroyed most of the cars in 2003.

Chrysler's development of turbine engines continued from the late 1960s into the 1970s, resulting in the creation of fifth- and sixth-generation engines. The turbines ultimately failed to meet government emissions regulations and had relatively poor fuel economy, despite promising early results and a $6.4 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency. According to Charles K. Hyde, the company's effort to enlarge and diversify its turbine program was unsuccessful and spread its "already-thin executive talent pool even thinner". An October 1967 Department of Commerce report concluded that the turbine engine was "unsuited to automobiles". Development continued on automotive turbines, in part because turbine exhaust contains fewer unburned hydrocarbons and lower concentrations of other pollutants. In March 1971, the Williams Research Corporation continued developing a turbine engine with funding from the National Air Pollution Control Administration. Chrysler's turbine engine development continued through the mid-1970s, however the program, along with the seventh-generation engine, was discontinued in 1979 as a requirement of the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979, as well as due to its inability to attain enough fuel economy. One Chrysler Turbine Car appeared in the 1964 film The Lively Set, painted white with blue racing stripes; it was the only Turbine Car not painted bronze.

Only nine Chrysler Turbine Cars have survived. Two are kept by Chrysler, out of three initially retained by the company; five are on display at museums around the United States, and two were acquired by private collectors. Chrysler has displayed one of its cars at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The five cars on museum display were donated to the Detroit Historical Museum, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Missouri, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In 2005, the Detroit Historical Museum lent its car, which had been in warehouse storage, to the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. All the cars donated to museums had their fan assemblies removed to render their engines inoperable, although the car owned by the Museum of Transportation was restored and returned to operating condition in the 1980s, allowing it to appear at car shows.

Two Chrysler Turbine Cars have been acquired by private collectors. One is owned by Frank Kleptz of Fort Wayne, Indiana which was originally donated to the former Harrah Collection in Reno, Nevada, before being purchased by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and sold to Kleptz. The second is owned by comedian and television host Jay Leno who purchased one of the three Turbine Cars originally retained by Chrysler in 2009. Leno's car was featured in the BBC television show James May's Cars of the People. Both privately owned Chrysler Turbine Cars are operational.

The Truth About Why Chrysler Destroyed The Turbine Cars
By Paul Niedermeyer

The video showing the destruction of 46 of the 55 Chrysler Turbine Cars we posted recently generated lots of heated discussion. The key issue is, and has been for years, whether import tariffs played a material role in Chrysler’s decision. There is a wealth of sites and reprinted vintage articles dedicated to the TC, and the import duty conspiracy theory reoccurs throughout them. Interestingly, Wikipedia, which is not to be trusted in all things automotive, is the only source that throws some doubt on that story: “The story at the time that this was done to avoid an import tariff was incorrect [citation needed].” Lacking that citation, it was time to do some further sleuthing, and either join the tariff theorists, or put a stake through it once and for all.

US import tariffs on cars average 2.5%, and numerous searches did not find any evidence that they were significantly higher in the 1960’s. Given the import boom during the fifties and sixties, they were presumably the same, if not less. A substantial tariff of 10% or more would have been punitive, and made imports significantly more expensive than they actually were.

The second issue is the value of the bodies that Ghia built for Chrysler. Various wild guesses have been thrown around ($250k each), but it’s not that hard to come up with a credible estimate. Ghia and the other Italian carrozzerias were almost solely in the business of designing and building small batches of custom bodies. We have an excellent comparison in the form of the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham that was coach-built by Pininfarina for the 1957 to 1960model years. Reliable estimates place the cost at $25k for each ’57-’58 model, and less for the Italian built ’59-’60 models. These are for the complete final vehicle. They were sold for about $14k; a loss-leading halo car that Caddy could well afford back then. Pininfarina built and trimmed 200 of the ultra-luxurious Broughams for Cadillac.

Coach-built bodies built in small batches were still common in the sixties, and almost all of the Italian exotics used them. Maseratis and the like with coach built bodies were selling for $15 – $20k. It seems quite unlikely that the Ghia bodies cost Chrysler much more than about $10 to $15k each, maybe $20k tops. The Ghia contract was just for bodies, without any mechanicals, suspension, or running gear.

Assuming the high end $20k number and applying the 2.5% rate results in a tariff of $500 per car. The total for 55 cars would have been $23k. These are utterly insignificant amounts compared to the millions Chrysler was spending on the turbine program. Was it cheaper than $500 to have the cars destroyed? In 1963, undoubtedly. But it certainly wasn’t the motivating factor.

Destroying the cars was the only realistic solution, for a number of reasons. First of all, selling the cars to the public was totally out of the question. Maintenance and support infrastructure would have been nonexistent . It took a team of five specially trained mechanics dedicated full-time to keep the brand-new Turbine Cars running during the public trials. Not surprisingly, the bronze beauties were far from trouble-free. Expensive materials to contain the initial (not final) 500 degree exhaust and certain performance aspects unique to the turbine (see below) were also considerations. The Turbine Cars had to be fed kerosene or diesel, neither of which was all that convenient to buy. Leaded gas left problematic deposits on the turbine blades.

In 1963, there certainly weren’t 55 car museums willing and able to adopt and care for these cars. The nine that were saved and allocated to museum seems about right for the times. Super-rich private collectors like Jay Leno were not common in those days of high incremental tax rates. The Turbine Car program had fulfilled its purpose of gaining potential customer feedback, and it was time to wrap it up.
There were numerous functional challenges and limitations with the Turbine Cars, of which sluggish throttle response was the biggest. This is an inherent design limitation of turbines, as they need to spin up to over 40,000 rpm to develop full power. The Turbine Car had a one and a half second lag from first pressing the throttle. That could be considered dangerous; it certainly would by today’s standards. Throttle lag was noticeable at higher speeds too. Performance was reasonable, about 12 seconds 0-60, but substantially less than if a 383 V8 were under that sleek hood. One extended test produced an average fuel economy of 11.5 mpg. Not terrible, but far from good. A comparably-quick conventional car at the time would be expected to achieve about 15 mpg.

The turbine offers the potential for superb longevity, but that depends on the extent to which exotic and expensive materials are utilized. Chrysler’s own test found that its turbine had a lifespan of “up to 175k miles”. Good for the times, but not really exceptional. Chrysler’s own slant sixes would typically go that far or further.

The scope of this article is not to fully explore the pros and cons of Chrysler’s turbines and their theoretical development potential. Suffice it say, the changing climate on emissions and fuel economy played their part in finally ending the turbine program during the seventies. But the biggest single hurdle was cost. In Chrysler’s own words: “the technology did not exist to produce turbine engines at a price anywhere near competitive to conventional internal combustion engines”. One thing is certain; having spent vast sums to build them, a $500 tariff was not the reason they were destroyed.


 

Technical specification:

Overview
Manufacturer Chrysler
Production 1963–1964
Designer Elwood Engel
Body and chassis
Class Concept car
Body style 2-door coupe
Layout FR layout

Powertrain
Engine Chrysler A-831 gas turbine
Transmission 3-speed TorqueFlite

Dimensions
Wheelbase 110 in (2,794 mm)
Length 201.6 in (5,121 mm)
Width 72.9 in (1,852 mm)
Height 53.5 in (1,359 mm)
Curb weight 3,952 pounds (1,793 kg)

Old brochures of the car

Video of the real car from YouTube

If you have any question or comment your are free to contact me at: aeronautic@stofanet.dk

Dealers are welcome to get their models reviewed too.

Aeronautic June 2018

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