Tagged: Turbine Powered Corvette

The World’s Only Jet Turbine-Powered Corvette!!!

C3 Corvettes / Corvette History / Corvette Oddball

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The World’s Only Jet Turbine-Powered Corvette!!!

Detroit in the 50s and ‘60s was a time of “let’s try it” thinking. GM tinkered with the turbine-engine Firebird I, II, and III cars in the ‘50s. Chrysler had been making turboprop engines since before WW II and started their turbine car program in ‘54. Turbine-powered race cars showed up at the Indy 500 in ‘62 and ‘66, with little success. But it was the red STP-sponsored, Andy Granatelli car that stunned everyone in ‘67.

World’s Only Turbine-Powered Corvette

C3 Corvettes / Corvette Engines / Corvette History / Corvette Oddball / Corvette Racers / Corvette Under the Hood

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World’s Only Turbine-Powered Corvette

Corvette was chosen because it was the only car they could find that would accommodate the long turbine engine. The engine, by the way, was the same unit that Granatelli used in the ’67 Indy turbine car. The front end of the car is essentially a shell to cover the engine. Talk about a lowly start, the Pratt & Whitney turbine engine was originally designed to be a power generator for oil drilling rigs. (Kind of like the trash compactor character in the film, “Wall-E”)