The Big Test

Auto engineers who dream of finding a replacement for the complicated, churning piston engine have long looked wistfully at the gas-turbine engine that introduced the jet age. The turbine--with its screeching siren noise, high fuel consumption, slow acceleration and searing exhaust gases--now dominates the jet field, but is still far out when it comes to autos. After 14 years of experimenting and several premature publicity outbursts on the subject, Chrysler Corp. is now confident that it has tamed the gas turbine.

Next week it will introduce a smartly styled turbine-powered car that it considers reliable enough to turn loose, at least for testing's sake, on a segment of the general public. In the next year Chrysler will circulate 50 hand-built models among 200 carefully selected motorists to record their experiences; if the car passes the test, it will be another step toward an innovation that may yet transform both the auto and oil industries.

Kerosene & Peanut Oil. Auto men were first attracted to the gas turbine by its simple construction (one-fifth the number of parts in a piston engine) and the fact that it could deliver high power while using almost any fuel that will burn in a test tube--from kerosene to peanut oil. Its basic works are uncomplicated. It sucks air through an intake and compresses it in a chamber into which fuel is sprayed and ignited by a spark plug (see diagram). The expanding gases drive one turbine wheel that spins the air compressor and then rush on to whirl another turbine that drives a shaft. Turbines in their simplest form have major disadvantages, but where these are not of prime importance, they are already hard at work. They run standby generators in telephone exchanges, drive an Army 13-car overland troop-supply train and power Navy landing craft, Marine hydrofoil boats and Air Force helicopters.

Because the turbines can deliver their greatest horsepower quickly and without faltering on hills, their biggest promise for smaller vehicles is in trucks, earth-moving equipment and farm tractors. Ford, General Motors and International Harvester have directed their research to developing turbines for such vehicles, but have been wary of turbine engines for autos. But only the Chrysler engineering team, headed by Research Engineer George Huebner Jr., seems to have licked the major problems of adapting the turbine to a passenger car.

Uncomfortable Shift. The Chrysler team brought the turbine's shriek under control with sound deadeners and mufflers. To cut fuel consumption down to that of a piston car (about 16 miles per gal.) and to lower the white-hot temperatures of the exhaust gases, Huebner devised a set of ingenious disk-shaped heat exchangers or regenerators, that are pierced with thousands of holes. The disks rotate first through the exhaust gases, absorb up to 90% of the exhaust heat, and thus cool the gases so that there is no longer any danger that they will fry the neighbors' dog or melt an asphalt driveway. Then they rotate into the path of the incoming air and discharge the heat from the exhaust gases, raising the incoming air temperature to 1,025DEGF. so that it takes less fuel to bring the air temperature to the 1,700DEGF. necessary to drive the turbines. Huebner has managed to get almost instant acceleration by putting a ring of variable blades beyond the compressor turbine that direct the gases in a sharper stream onto the power turbine when the driver steps on the gas. By reversing the blades to counter the power turbine's spin, Chrysler's engine can brake the car just as a piston engine can.

Chrysler is careful about its claims for the future. It is uncomfortably aware of what a major shift to gas-turbine engines would do to the auto industry's vast investment in the piston engine and to the oil industry's stake in high-octane fuels, is also mindful of difficulties yet unforeseen in widespread use of the turbines. But there is already plenty of evidence that the public is willing to give the new engines a try. Before the car has even been officially shown, Chrysler has received more than 4,000 letters from motorists pleading for a chance to drive one of the test cars.

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