Jet Under the Hood

On and off over the years, Detroit's engineers have cranked up substitutes for the old piston engine, but nothing much has come of them. In Manhattan last week, Chrysler Corp., which lately has been casting around for ways to bolster its sagging business, unveiled a new experimental automobile engine (installed in a Dodge Dart) and sent it scooting to the West Coast on a trial run.

The new engine is a gas turbine affair--adapted in principle from the turbojet airplane engine--which Chrysler has been working on for years (TIME, March 29, 1954). A compressor forces air into a chamber where it is heated and then mixed with fuel (see diagram). A single spark plug ignites the mixture, and the expanding hot gases drive two turbines. The first turbine turns the original air compressor, and the second turns the power shaft that connects to the rear wheels. The exhaust gases are recycled into a regenerator to heat the incoming air.

Chrysler's engineers claim that their version of the turbine engine provides many advantages over the conventional piston-driven types. It weighs one-third less, has fewer moving parts (and thus causes less vibration), needs little overhauling, and can probably outlast an auto body. It requires no oil changes or Antifreeze, can use any kind of fuel that can be sent through a pipe and that will burn with air. "It will run beautifully on diesel fuel, peanut oil, gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, furnace oil--or even French perfume," says Engineer George Huebner Jr., conjuring visions of service stations equipped with Chanel No. 5 atomizers.

Chrysler's rivals--who, at one time or another, have looked into turbine engine possibilities--are skeptical. They argue that the cost of building such engines is prohibitive, that they accelerate slowly, that it is hard to slow down the turbines when the driver releases the accelerator, in the same way that it is difficult to stop the blades of a turboprop airplane.

Chrysler claims that it has solved the last problem by designing a system of variable nozzles that counters the turbines' spin and brings them to a controlled stop. The company plans to conduct further engineering and cost studies, after which it will decide on volume production.

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