Ford's Turbine T-Bird

Hi Guys

I never heard of the Thunderbird with the Boeing gas turbine. I worked one summer and for about a year after collage at the gas turbine division of Boeing. It was at Boeing Plant One and across the street was the red barn. That is now part of the aerospace museum on Boeing Field. The time period was 1960 to 1963, maybe that is why I never heard of the Thunderbird. There was an engineer that had a 32 Ford with a turbine engine installed. Every couple months he would bring it to work and blast up and down the street at lunch time. Very strange sounding. He was also the guy that went to Indy to support the gas turbine race car. That was kind of a bust. The other automotive application that I remember was a San Francisco fire truck which did not work out. One application that also was a bust was a turbine powered drone that carried a torpedo from a destroyer. It had a habit of not coming back and falling in to the ocean. I think Boeing got into the turbine business to provide air starters for their jet aircraft and the engines were kind of an after thought. This was a turbine with the compressor stage providing bleed air to spin up the aircraft engines. Actually one of the best jobs I every had working on mechanical bits and pieces, still feel a little bad about when they lost a major engine contract (LOH) and closed the plant.

JD

Like JD I had never heard of this car until just now. Thanks John for something very interesting to ponder"what if".

Union Pacific had great experience with Gas Turbine trains.

Awesome beasts with close to 10,000 hp.......

Thanks John. This is an interesting article and that Thunderbird certainly looks impressive with that huge turbine outlet.