12 MOST AMAZING GAS TURBINE TRUCKS FULL REVIEW

12 MOST AMAZING GAS TURBINE TRUCKS FULL REVIEW 

GAS TURBINE TRUCKS | Let's see a full review about what are the top 12 amazing gas turbine vehicles.

 

GAS TURBINE TRUCKS

WHAT ARE THE GAS TURBINE MONSTER TRUCKS OF THE 1960S?

During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, gas-turbine American mainline trucks were supposed to be the start of a revolution in the freight industry.

Some people even thought that they would lead to a revolution in the entire automobile industry.

Things didn't quite turn out that way. But the era still saw some mighty and magnificent vehicles being built.

We've hand-picked the most innovative and exciting designs from those years to showcase for you in this story, some of them may look a little strange by modern standards. But at the time they were designed, they were seen as the vehicles of the future.

Whenever there's been innovation in the automobile industry, the name of General Motors has always been in and around that innovation.

So it's no surprise to see that they were interested in turbine-powered trucks. Their most promising design was the General Motors bison, which made its debut at the World Fair in New York in 1964.

Provoking excitement from the crowds who gathered to see it. The Ford Mustang may have been the star of the show from a personal vehicle point of view, but it was the turbine-powered bison that looked the most futuristic boasting four-wheel steering, slick aerodynamic design, and a turbine-power plan above the cockpit.

This truck aim to set the standard for mobile containers years before there was such a thing as a standard measurement.

Sadly, the World Fair was its one and only appearance. We can only speculate about the reasons why it was never taken forward.

Although to our eyes, the design of the cab looks like it would be a liability in a collision. Safe safety issues were ultimately the reason for the failure of most gas turbine trucks, but it didn't stop big-name companies from trying to make it work.

Chevrolet also wanted it on the phone. And in 1966, they came up with the Turbo Titan three, which contained a super powerful prototype gas turbine engine capable of 280 horsepower.

The creation of the prototype was the culmination of 15 years of work for Chevrolet, who had previously fitted the engine successfully to buses and therefore had no reason to suspect it would fail.

The Turbo Titan three was set out on a nationwide promotional tour in the summer of 1966, with the promise that it would be available to buy soon, but soon never arrived, and it was quietly scrapped.

Perhaps its strange steering system, which removed the steering wheel and replaced it with a dial proved to be too challenging for drivers to adapt to, or perhaps Chevrolet simply couldn't make their creation compliant with stringent government regulations.

The idea of gas turbine trucks is most closely associated with the United States of America.

But it doesn't mean that other countries weren't attempting to make the idea work for themselves.

The USSR was in constant competition with the USA on all fronts of technology during the 60s and 70s.

So they tried their hand at making a gas turbine truck and the shape of the mass 2000, which they refer to as a road train.

Although it was conceived in the 1970s production work on a prototype didn't begin until 1985.

With an experimental model available for demonstration by the following year. Capable of 75 miles per hour with an electronic joystick where you'd normally expect the gearstick to be, it appeared to be a powerful machine.

On the downside the bulky design wasn't as aerodynamic as the American models, and the complexity of the components and electronics meant that it was expensive both to build and to maintain.

Ironically, for a vehicle that was nicknamed the perestroika. The cancellation of the mass 2000 came as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ford is a fantastic automobile company, but they're not always big on imagination when it comes to names.

Their 1964 Gas Turbine truck was big and red, so they decided to call it the Ford Big Red.

The word big doesn't do justice to the colossal size of the vehicle, and 100 feet long and 20 feet high.

This was more like a house on wheels than a conventional transport truck and the gas turbine engine was capable of 600 horsepower.

That meant it could reach 70 miles per hour, even though it weighed almost 80 tonnes. This was another truck that was shown off at the 1964 World Fair, like the Chevrolet van.

It was also sent out on a promotional tour of the USA, during that tour, the people who had the privilege of driving it spoke of the comfort of its air ride suspension.

For his era that was a luxury unheard of in truck design. Ford was very happy with its design and would have loved to have put it into mass production.

But the costs of that production were a barrier. And the fact that different US states had different laws regarding gas turbines proved to be the final nail in the coffin.

Kenworth was one of the best-known and most successful heavy truck manufacturers in all of the United States during the 1950s.

But they knew they need some specialist help if they were going to create a viable gas turbine truck.

For that reason they got in touch with Boeing, who agreed to help them create the experimental Kenworth 524.

Working together the two huge companies wanted to create a gas turbine truck suitable for everyday use on America's highways.

The shell of the truck came from a Kenworth production tractor, but it was souped up with a 175 horsepower Boeing 5028, a gas turbine, and a pair of wide pipes to supply air to the engine.

It's thought that this can work Boeing's collaboration produced the first compact turbine engine in world history.

But being the first also meant that they encountered problems that later designers would be able to overcome.

The engine was so loud that it would damage the hearing of whoever drove it, and the fuel consumption of 235 liters for every 62 Miles was too high for a commercial model to be viable.

During the peak of excitement about gas turbine engines, it was hoped that the technology would have more applications than just haulage and freight.

If a superfast reliable turbine-powered vehicle could be created. It would also have positive implications for the future of emergency vehicles.

American love France thought that gas turbine engines would be perfect for the fire trucks of the future, and they exhibited their 900 series gas turbine fire truck in 1960.

At New York's IAFC conference, the idea caught on in four units that were built and shipped to various locations around the USA.

But a critical flaw was quickly identified in San Francisco, the Boeing 502 10 C engine meant that going uphill was easy, but the brakes weren't powerful enough to slow the vehicle down effectively when it was going downhill.

The lack of braking power meant that the trucks were likely to cause as many disasters as they prevented and so all the turbine engines were swapped out for conventional ones within two years of their creation.

The roads of Great Britain are narrower than the roads of the United States of America. So when the British came up with a gas turbine truck.

It was always inevitable that it would be smaller than any of its American equivalents. This is Leyland's two s 350 Gas Turbine semi-trailer designed by British Leyland in 1968.

The engine was stable and had successfully been used in racing cars of the era. But the truck was considered to be an experiment and was officially discontinued within five years of the first model being built. Huge companies like so.

Shell and Castro all ordered models of the semi from British Leyland, but shells were sent back after a single year due to multiple breakdowns.

The 1973 oil crisis dramatically increased the cost of running the engine of the vehicle and made the vehicles nonviable, and production was permanently halted in that year.

In truth, the company had never solved the problem of the engine's enormous fuel consumption, and it was doubtful it would have any future in any event.

We've seen plenty of gas turbine trucks and gas turbine fire engines. But here's a gas turbine bus designed to get you to and from work on your daily commute.

This is the GM turbo cruiser, which as the name suggests was another General Motors innovation.

The first prototype built in 1953 was an old Detroit transit TDH 4512 Coach, stripped of its original engine, and fitted with the company's first-ever gas turbine engine, which was formerly known as the GT 300 but had the more exciting nickname world fire.

It had doubled the horsepower of the GM 671 diesel engines they use for their buses of the era, but unfortunately, it also had doubled the fuel consumption 11 years later in 1964.

They tried again with a turbo cruiser to a GM TDH 5303 coach with the GT 309 turbine engine.

But fuel consumption was still too high, and braking was unreliable, and deterred they followed up with the Turbo cruiser three in 1968.

In reality, this was just the turbo cruiser two with an updated engine, and it encountered all of the same problems. GM considered that to be the ideal third strike, so they were out.

While GMs buses had a gas turbine engine externally, they still look like standard buses.

The same could not be said of the Verde golden dolphin and Italian bus concept from the late 1950s.

That looked like something from a James Bond movie. According to the promotional materials that were released at the time, this super aerodynamic bus used its 400 horsepower gas turbine engine to reach a top speed of over 120 miles an hour.

Back in the 1950s. That kind of speed was unthinkable, as well as being super fast. It also offered features we'd consider luxurious today, including large plush seats, air conditioning, and individualized radios for passengers.

It was called a dolphin for a reason. The rear of the golden coach was fitted with a large fin to help maintain balance and stability.

Unusually, despite being 36 feet long, the window and windshield of the coach were all one pane of glass, which would likely be a liability in the event of an accident.

Only one unit was ever made, and it's not known why the project was abandoned. Although it would be fair to assume that it ran into the same fuel consumption issues as all the vehicles we've mentioned already.

We're going to step away from trucks and coaches for a moment because we believe there's a gas turbine-powered car that deserves mentioning.

It's the Fiat turbine and work began on its design in 1948. Technically speaking, the rover was the first manufacturer to come up with a gas turbine-propelled car.

But Fiat was more attractive and better known, with an appearance that wouldn't look out of place on a racetrack that turbine was the star of the show at the Tarun motor show of 1954 Fiat claimed that the car was capable of 160 miles per hour and that the design was remarkable for the fact that it featured neither a gearbox nor a clutch during wind tunnel test and set a record for lowest drag coefficient that wouldn't be broken for 30 years.

Despite all these impressive statistics, it never got beyond the concept car stage because of not only the fuel consumption issue but also the fact that it reached dangerously high temperatures after a few hours of driving.

The USSR was always big on the idea of producing all-terrain vehicles. And so if a gas turbine engine all-terrain vehicle was likely to be built anywhere in the world, it would be built there and it was by order of the Soviet military that the BAS II 135 G gas turbine all-terrain vehicle was created by the Briansk automobile plant in 1968.

And execution this was a BAS 135 M off-road tractor with a few modifications, the most important of which was the introduction of the GTD 350 T turbine.

To cope with the engine the gearbox was also stripped out and replaced with the hydromechanical for speed transmission.

During side-by-side tests with tractors fitted with standard diesel engines, the BAS 135 G was found to perform better at high speeds, but significantly worse at low speeds.

As most off-road driving happens at low speed, it was decided that there was no material advantage to be gained from going any further with the idea. So the project was called to a halt.

We don't want to leave you with the impression that the whole gas turbine experiment was a failure. So before we go, here's some exciting news.

Gas Turbine trucks may have a future and we have Walmart to thank for it. As of 2014, the company has been experimenting with Walmart's advanced vehicle experience trucks known as a wave for short.

The aerodynamically sleek trucks are powered by what the company is referring to as microturbines developed by the Capstone turbine company.

The New Age turbine can run on gas but can also run on electricity or any other type of fuel, giving the driver a range of performance options to choose from based on regulations and location.

Coupled with a 53-foot long one-piece carbon fiber trailer that's over 4000 pounds lighter than a conventional equivalent.

Is this really might be the future of trucking and haulage. But then that's what every company that experimented with it during the 20th century.

Thanks for reading.

God bless you.