Reviews
Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation, by Steve Lehto, Jay Leno
expendablemudge's review
3.0
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Report: A short, concise history of the very thing the title declares: The coolest creation ever to come out of Detroit!
My Review: Oh wow! Oh cool! Oh my GOD why didn't they make this?! Well, after reading this book, I know why: It was too far ahead of its time, and when its time came, the company was on the ropes. The author spoke to everyone he could find still living who participated in the most amazing PR campaign of all time: Chrysler made 50 of these babies and, over the course of 1964-1966, lent them out to 203 drivers for 90 days apiece. The 50 cars racked up over 1 million miles of travel, and had less than 1% downtime in all of that driving. Reliability was clearly not a huge issue. But what *was* a huge issue was the way the turbines needed to be manufactured, basically each one by hand. There was, in that pre-computer-control era, no way to automate the process of making the engine parts.
But then the what-if machine kicks in: The cars didn't need to use gasoline, or even petroleum products...they ran one car on tequila, and another on peanut oil. Had manufacture gone ahead, perhaps advances in technology would've speeded up computer-aided design and production. Imagine a world where the car smells like a deep fryer and sounds like a jet.
Lost chances. The very source of all good fiction. *turns on private bubble machine*
The Book Report: A short, concise history of the very thing the title declares: The coolest creation ever to come out of Detroit!
My Review: Oh wow! Oh cool! Oh my GOD why didn't they make this?! Well, after reading this book, I know why: It was too far ahead of its time, and when its time came, the company was on the ropes. The author spoke to everyone he could find still living who participated in the most amazing PR campaign of all time: Chrysler made 50 of these babies and, over the course of 1964-1966, lent them out to 203 drivers for 90 days apiece. The 50 cars racked up over 1 million miles of travel, and had less than 1% downtime in all of that driving. Reliability was clearly not a huge issue. But what *was* a huge issue was the way the turbines needed to be manufactured, basically each one by hand. There was, in that pre-computer-control era, no way to automate the process of making the engine parts.
But then the what-if machine kicks in: The cars didn't need to use gasoline, or even petroleum products...they ran one car on tequila, and another on peanut oil. Had manufacture gone ahead, perhaps advances in technology would've speeded up computer-aided design and production. Imagine a world where the car smells like a deep fryer and sounds like a jet.
Lost chances. The very source of all good fiction. *turns on private bubble machine*
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