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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Turbine-Powered Rover – The Experimental JET T.3 Gas Turbine Car

Posted August 19, 2019 11:00 AM by dstrohl
Pathfinder Tags: classic auto engine history turbine

Long before Chrysler fitted a turbine engine to an automobile and shortly after World War II concluded, Rover began experimenting with smooth-spinning turbines as an alternative automotive power source. Although it never made it to production, it’s certainly an interesting and significant part of automotive history; they even printed this brochure.

It stated: “Since experimental work on ‘JET 1,’ the world’s first gas turbine car began in 1946, there has been intense activity at Solihull, headquarters of The Rover Company. In 1955 a second prototype was produced which had a rear mounted gas turbine in a normal saloon body. But now comes ‘T.3,’ Rover’s first practical, specially designed gas turbine-powered motor car.

Another infamous powerplant that didn't quite make production...

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Re: Turbine-Powered Rover – The Experimental JET T.3 Gas Turbine Car

08/25/2019 7:13 PM

"At the M.I.R.A test rack, situated in the heart of the U.K., when Rover put their T.3 through its paces, it achieved a 0-60 mph time of 10.5 seconds, with 18 seconds recorded to reach 80 mph. At 60 mph fuel consumption reached 14.3 mpg, dropping down to a mere 12.8 mpg at 80 mph. These fuel mileage figures are much poorer than they actually seem simply because Britain’s imperial gallon equates to 4.5 liters of liquid vs the smaller U.S. gallon size of 3.7 liters."

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2019/08/12/turbine-powered-rover-the-experimental-jet-t-3-gas-turbine-car/

It seems you should get more performance with that kind of fuel consumption. I don't know how much improvement could be had with more development (and a lighter body), but the gas mileage is far below modern standards. Some folks might like one for the novelty value, though.

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