I was in the doctors waiting room last week and read an interesting article about the Chrysler turbine cars from the early sixties in a copy of Classic Car. After they were dropped and all the pre-production cars were scrapped, the new design intended for the production cars was used for the original Charger. I never knew that.
Imagine the above with a turbine idling at 24,000 rpm!
A total of 55 turbine cars were produced. When Chrysler had finished the user program and other public displays of the cars, 46 of them were destroyed to avoid an import tariff. Of the remaining nine cars, six had the engines de-activated and then they were donated to museums around the country. Chrysler retained three of the turbine cars for historical reasons. Of the nine remaining turbine cars only three were functional. One of the cars kept by Chrysler is stored in running condition at the proving grounds, while another car was purchased from a museum by a private automobile collector and is also functional (Frank Kleptz of Terre Haute, Indiana). The last turbine car that is functional is owned by the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, was photographed for Mopar Action magazine, and appears at car shows around the United States from time to time. An owner of a non-functional car contacted the then Chrysler chairman Robert Lutz, who gave him the proper part to make it functional[citation needed], making four out of the nine fully working vehicles.
Chrysler's turbine engine program did not die completely. A new coupe body would appear, re-engineered and rebadged, as the 1966 Dodge Charger. Chrysler went on to develop a sixth generation gas-turbine engine which did meet nitrogen oxide regulations, and installed it in a 1966 Dodge Coronet, though it was never shown. A smaller, lighter seventh generation engine was produced in the early 1970s, when company received a grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for further development, and a special bodied turbine Chrysler LeBaron was built in 1977 as a prelude to a production run. By then the company was in dire financial straits and needed U.S. government loan guarantees to avoid bankruptcy. A condition of that deal was that gas-turbine mass production be abandoned because it was "too risky" thus giving roots to many conspiracy theories.