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Fiat Turbina: That went the nozzle

2021-08-15T05:52:26.537Z


The history of automobiles is full of crazy studies that first inspired and then disappeared. This time: a Fiat with turbine drive.


Enlarge image

The Fiat Turbina was completed and tested in 1954.

However, the jet drive was useless for large-scale production

Photo: torephoto / CC BY 2.0 / wikimedia commons

On April 14, 1954, a deafening hiss shook the south of Turin.

The noise came from a new car that was being tested for the first time that day on the test oval on the roof of the Fiat Lingotto factory.

It was a prototype with a gas turbine drive that Fiat Turbina, test driver Carlo Salamano chased up there through the banked bends.

Dante Giacosa, then technical director at Fiat, had the idea for a jet car. The development in aviation had brought him to it. During the Second World War, jet planes had increasingly replaced the propeller-driven planes powered by piston engines; In the post-war phase, this change in technology also became apparent in civil aviation. Why shouldn't that also be the case with automobiles? Especially since the English manufacturer Rover had already presented a jet car called the Rover Jet 1 in 1950.

Fiat followed suit with the Turbina.

The gas turbine was specially developed for use as an automobile engine.

The unit weighed 260 kilograms, a turbine with three combustion chambers, a two-stage compressor and three turbine stages, two of which drove the compressor and the third acted on the rear wheels via a reduction gear.

The engine worked at up to 22,000 revolutions per minute.

The power was around 220 kW (300 PS), the top speed around 250 km / h.

Jet propulsion and jet design

However, this was not achieved on the Fiat test track on the roof, but on the taxiway at Turin-Caselle Airport. The Turbina was presented to the public a little later at the Turin Motor Show. The spectacularly designed coupé with the rear-hinged doors, the supple, crouched shape, the high tail fins and the chrome-plated turbine opening at the rear delighted the audience.

Aerodynamicists were also enthusiastic.

Several sources speak of a drag coefficient of 0.14 for the car - and that this record lasted for 30 years.

In the interior of the two-seater, the large wooden steering wheel and the twelve round instruments, which indicate, among other things, engine speed, speed, oil temperature, combustion chamber temperature and the pressure in the two separate fuel systems, are striking.

The two kerosene tanks of the Fiat Turbina are located in the sills below the door cutouts on the left and right.

Too high consumption, too hot exhaust gases

Although the turbine technology in itself worked, it quickly became clear that it was useless as an automobile drive.

The fuel consumption was far too high, the heat development far too strong.

For the Fiat Turbina this meant that it remained unique.

In general, jet cars were mostly only available as prototypes - as highly exotic exceptions.

A field test by the US brand Chrysler with a total of 50 turbine cars from 1963 to 1966 with a total of 1.8 million test kilometers was promising, but the project was not seriously pursued.

Almost all of the test cars were destroyed.

The Fiat Turbina did not share this fate.

The car is now in the "Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile" in Turin.

However, without the gas turbine drive, because it is kept in Fiat's »Centro Storico«.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-08-15

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