Parnelli Jones' Turbine car lost to a piston engine car driven by A.J.Foyt in the 1967 INDY 500.
Excerpt from article:
"I was fairly certain, as certain as you can be in this unpredictable race, that I would get the checkered flag," said Jones. "There were only four lap left and I was running very slow, taking no chances, as the yellow light was on. Then the trouble started without any indication of gear box failure."
Hard-luck Andy Granatelli, president of the Studebaker's STP division who thought he had a cinch winner in the turbine entry, had only a technical explanation of the car's startling home stretch collapse.
"You all knew we had gear problems earlier this month here, but it was not the gears, it was a bearing failure in the gear box."
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Background Info:
A turbine engine has no pistons. A nozzle blows hot gas over a spinning fan blade.
This engine has 80% fewer parts. Only a few moving parts, and can burn about anything that will burn.
It is my opinion that we should be using Gas Turbine engines instead of piston engines.
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It is in the best financial interest of most of the current automobile/gas/oil businesses to keep using piston engines that are much more complex and expensive to maintain, and burning the dirty oil based fuel rather than clean fuels like alcohol and hydrogen gas.
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Every major auto company has had a gas turbine project at one time or another. All seem to be going well, but when it comes production time, they all have an excuse to not go with the gas turbine engine.
The latest was the Jaguar C-X75.
They decided not to go into production due to the "global economic crisis."
This car is NOT a poor mans car.....
STP-Paxton Turbocar
1967 Indianapolis 500 - Wiki
http://www.mmbolding.com/Indy/Indy1967.htm
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