Whilst scouring the web for images of Americana, I came across these amazing pictures of Graham hill-​​driven Turbine Indy car from around 1968 in the Life Photo Archive.

In the race to produce an altern­ative to the internally combusted, piston-​​and-​​crankshaft model of car propulsion, there have been many inter­esting exper­i­ments. The gas turbine was one of most audacious and surely the least fuel-​​efficient.

Gas turbines use combustion like normal car engines, but instead of crank­shafts and pistons, gases forced over blades of the turbine rotate, creating the drive.

Among the most high profile early turbine exper­i­menters were Colin Chapman of Lotus fame. Chapman intro­duced the Lotus 56B F1 car in 1971, powered by a Pratt & Whitney gas turbine.

Turbine powered cars, with no gearbox and incredible power, had achieved some success in American Indy oval racing, where the turbines could be opened up at a constant rate for long periods, but appar­ently problems with two-​​way turbo lag in the more dynamic F1 context, which required staccatto braking and accel­er­ation for hours on end, forced Chapman to abandon the project before the car had raced in anger.

I imagine that gas turbine’s one-​​dimensional power arc might even have an applic­ation on the razor-​​straight, grid like road system of contem­porary America. Every vehicle I have driven in America, from taxi cab to bus to Hhotrod seems great at going forward, loudly, with as little effort as possible, but the bump and grind of a twisty road is another propos­ition entirely.