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Jay Leno talks about his restored Chrysler Turbine at the Woodward Dream Cruise
Posted by Talbot Payne on August 18, 2024
Pontiac — The Woodward Dream Cruise is where people from all over North America bring their unique automobiles: classic milk trucks, 1,500-horspower dragsters, Batmobiles.
This year, Jay Leno brought his rare Chrysler Turbine car.
The comedian was at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Saginaw Street on Saturday afternoon doing what all Cruisers do: meeting fellow gearheads, taking pictures and talking about his latest find. Dressed in his signature jeans, the Hollywood celebrity feels more at home at the Cruise than at the ritzy Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California this weekend.
Jay Leno and his Chrysler Turbine automobile at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Pontiac, Michigan on Aug. 17, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
“If you to California, you meet one guy with a hundred cars. Here you meet 100 guys who each own one car,” Leno said in an interview. “And, for a lot of them, it’s a car they bought before they got married and it’s been sitting in the garage and they are waiting for the kids to graduate from college so they can finish the project they started in high school. I love that part of it.”
Leno’s latest project is the root beer-colored 1963 Turbine, a car that he first saw as a kid at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.
“I grew up at a time when people said: ‘By the time you’re adults, cars will fly and you won’t have to eat a meal and take a pill and we’ll all wear silver suits that never get dirty,” Leno said, getting animated. “Kennedy was saying we could have a man on the moon — GET OUTTA HERE! — and have jet cars — GET OUTTA HERE! — and both of those things came true. It was an era when there was nothing America couldn’t do.”
Interior of Jay Leno’s Chrysler Turbine automobile at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Pontiac, Michigan on Aug. 17, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
Chrysler built 55 of the Turbines — all painted Turbine Bronze — in 1963-64, the pinnacle of a turbine engine program that had begun after World War II. Eventually destroying all but nine, Chrysler held on to two. Six of them are in museums, and Leno owns one.
“I managed to get one that ran,” said the comedian. “I was driving one day and — XXXXHT! — the engine just melted down. I called Chrysler, but the (turbine program) guys there were all retired.”
Well, sort of.
Jay Leno’s Chrysler Turbine automobile, with the turbine under the hood, at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Pontiac, Michigan on Aug. 17, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
Leno knew that one of the original Chrysler turbine engineers was Sam Williams (1921-2009), a genius engineer who went on to found Pontiac-based Williams International, a world-renowned jet engine manufacturer. Williams’ son Gregg is the current CEO.
“I knew the Williams connection, so I contacted Gregg because I knew his dad’s connection to the car,” said Leno. “They gave us a clean room and found 60 guys from the original Chrysler team — all over the age of 80. It looked like the movie “Cocoon” — one guy was 94, sharp as a tack, knew every statistic. We couldn’t have done it without him.”
Williams International got the band back together, and, using modern manufacturing technology like 3D printing, they restored the historic A-831 Turbine engine to life.
“My father, Sam, started his career working for Chrysler in Highland Park — working on a turboprop engine for World War II airplanes,” said Gregg Williams, sitting next to Leno at the Dream Cruise. “And when the war came to an end, they took those engineers and put them to work with this revolutionary thought that they could built a gas-turbine powered car. It was a thought way ahead of its time.”
More like the Batmobile, Jay Leno’s Chrysler Turbine automobile is a sight to see at the Woodward Dream Cruise in Pontiac on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
After Chrysler pulled the plug in the 1960s (and the Indianapolis 500 regulated turbine race engines out of existence), jet turbine cars were shelved. Until Leno came along.
“Instead of throwing out the blueprints, they kept all this stuff,” smiled Leno. “And I come around 50 years later, and (imitating an old codger’s husky voice) — here’s the chance to do it again!
Continued America’s most famous car buff: “Now, to hear it start up — mmmMMMMHHH! — at 22,000 RPM, it’s smooth, quiet. It’s a real testament to what we could do. You realize how much knowledge is there — and it’s lost technology.”
Williams isn’t so sure it’s lost — and that there still may be a future for the turbine-powered car.
In the 1960s, he explained, “The tech just wasn’t there to make it efficient enough to be competitive. With today’s technology and the new super-alloys, we could actually make a hybrid turbine vehicle very efficiently with very low emissions. The beauty of a turbine is you can feed it with just about any fuel — natural gas, hydrogen, renewables, any fuel that burns in oxygen.”
Any fuel?
“I’ll run mine on Jet A,” laughed Leno, referring to the fuel that commercial airliners use. “But back in the day when (Chrysler) took it to France, they ran it on Chanel No. 5. When they took it Mexico, they ran it on tequila. So any fuel works. You could put liquor in there.”
An experimental project, the Italian-designed Chrysler Turbine, Leno recounted, was given to 203 drivers in 133 cities for three months apiece to keep a diary. “To this day, I contact people whose dad or mom were on the original program and want to ride in it again.”
Maybe he’ll give them all rides at next year’s Dream Cruise.
“I like Detroit … it’s not all Ferraris and Lamborghinis,” said Leno. “It’s guys with Chevy Novas and Plymouth Furys — stuff you don’t see every day and that’s what’s fun. I like talking with some guy about his Slant-6 Valiant. It’s not worth a lot — but it is to him. And its free! I like Pebble Beach, but it’s $1,500 a ticket.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.