Turbochargers fill the automotive landscape today, and you’ll find them in everything from basic family cars to world-beating supercars. But there was a time when the appearance of a metal snail in the engine bay of a passenger car was novel, and General Motors was a leader in the technology. In 1962, General Motors launched the world’s first and the world’s second mass-production turbo cars, the Corvair Monza Spyder and the Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire, respectively. Both of these cars were ahead of their time, but the Oldsmobile was totally bonkers, and required owners to use a bottle of so-called “Turbo Rocket Fluid” just for it to work correctly.
Before I begin, I want to clear the air here. The 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire is frequently reported by several generally authoritative automotive outlets to be the world’s first mass-production turbocharged passenger car, but that is not true. The Jetfire was introduced at the New York Auto Show in April 1962. The Corvair Monza Spyder beat it by mere weeks, as it was introduced at the Chicago Auto Show in March 1962 (and also hit the market earlier). However, I don’t think that diminishes GM’s achievement here. Its brands launched not just one, but two revolutionary turbo cars within only weeks of each other, and both cars took different paths to achieve their results. Both cars are proud examples of the engineering prowess of General Motors.
Both of these cars came from an era when automakers were thirsty for power. People living in the 1960s got to witness the rise of the muscle car and gross horsepower numbers rising into the stratosphere. But before the act of putting big V8s into smaller cars became mainstream, two General Motors brands sought greater power through forced induction.
A Boosted History
The concept of forced induction wasn’t new in America. Back in the 1930s, automakers like Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, and Graham each experimented with supercharging. The Germans were playing with supercharging even earlier than that.
Turbochargers had been around since 1905, when Swiss engineer Alfred Büchi earned a patent for what is considered to be the first practical turbocharger design. Early on, the turbocharger was used as an aid for aviation. Naturally-aspirated piston engines have a knack for losing power in the decreased air density of higher altitudes. By slapping a turbo onto an aircraft engine, the aircraft can keep its high performance, even at high altitude.
Turbos hit their stride in World War II, permitting aircraft like the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning to fly high with impressive power numbers. Forced induction was found all over aviation during World War II, and it allowed aircraft engines to hit quadruple-digit horsepower.
After the war, forced induction came into its own on the road. Heavy truck and farm equipment producers found themselves in a pickle. Power demands kept rising, and the traditional method to get more power out of a diesel was to up displacement. But bigger diesels were heavier and more expensive. Turbocharging offered a novel way to increase power. Commercial diesel engines would embrace turbocharging during the 1950s. Meanwhile, automotive marques like Ford, Kaiser, and Studebaker tried their hands at supercharging.
A centrifugal supercharger was seen as an imperfect alternative to more power back then. The mechanical design of a supercharger meant that its speed was dependent on crankshaft speed. Superchargers back then didn’t make a ton of boost until the engine was revving high, leaving the low RPM and middle RPM regimes without much grunt. Superchargers were also known for being noisy, unreliable, and expensive. Putting a big blower on a car was good for competition, but it hadn’t quite worked that well in a regular street car.
In the late 1950s, engineers at General Motors decided to embark on an adventure of their own. Out of the other end, they would create the Corvair Monza Spyder and the Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire. Today, I want to highlight just how bonkers the Oldsmobile was.
It’s ‘Free’ Horsepower
As Motor Trend wrote in May 1962, engineers were enamored by the promises of turbocharging. Power demands for cars were increasing, and engineers turned to the waste product of combustion, engine exhaust. The thought was that by having exhaust gases drive a turbocharger, you could achieve a “free” energy boost.
In theory, this “free energy” concept made turbos better than superchargers. A supercharged engine will use a portion of its output to drive the supercharger to get back more power. But a turbo is not concerned with driving screws or belts, and just needs flowing exhaust gases. Of course, the reality is that, despite claims in the motoring press back then, turbos aren’t completely “free” energy, as there’s still backpressure. But the idea was sound.
General Motors didn’t go into its solution blindly. As Ate Up With Motor writes, from 1954 to 1959, General Motors Research Laboratories embarked on an early turbocharging experiment. This explored the possibility of getting supercharger-like boost through wasted exhaust gases. Reportedly, GM Research Labs started with simulations before installing a turbo onto a simple single-cylinder engine. Eventually, GM’s testing resulted in at least one Oldsmobile Rocket V8 getting outfitted with a Schwitzer turbo.
In 1956, Research Laboratories activities manager Alfred L. Boegehold published a presentation that suggested that aluminum engines were possibly the future, and that slapping a turbo onto an aluminum engine could result in a favorable power-to-weight ratio at only slightly higher fuel consumption than a cast-iron engine. GM’s research into turbocharging initially went nowhere, but now, it was going to be put to use.
The Motor Cities National Heritage Area writes that Ford was working on offering the intermediate Fairlane’s 164 HP 260 cubic inch V8 in its compact Ford Falcon. This would eventually happen in early 1963, but GM would initially take a very different path to getting more horses in a smaller body. The Oldsmobile team, which was led by engineer Gib Butler, partnered up with Garrett AiResearch, which had extensive experience providing turbos for commercial diesel applications. The Corvair team, which was led by engineers James Brafford and Bob Thoreson, went with a turbo from TRW.
The teams at Chevrolet and Oldsmobile were more or less in a race. Oldsmobile announced its turbo in the summer of 1961, and was supposed to be the absolute first to the market with a mass-market turbo car. However, technical snags delayed the introduction of Oldsmobile’s car, allowing the team at Chevrolet to catch up. When Motor Trend wrote its May 1962 issue, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet were so neck and neck that the press didn’t know who would be first.
Oldsmobile Engineers Stretch 1960s Technology
What would make Oldsmobile’s effort different was in the way that it handled the turbocharger pressure curve. Back then, turbochargers were known for comically huge lag. Basically, early turbos made basically no boost at low RPMs and still not enough boost at medium speeds. In practice, this meant that some turbo vehicles felt gutless until near the end of their rev range, when the turbo finally wakes up with a kick of boost.
Oldsmobile engineers came up with what they believed was the best of both worlds. Their Garrett turbo would make its full 6 PSI of boost at a range of between 2,000 RPM and 2,500 RPM. Oldsmobile engineers then decided that they wanted their engine to make 6 PSI across its entire rev range. This was a departure from the Corvair’s turbocharger, which was allowed to increase its boost significantly as the engine accelerated.
Oldsmobile kept its boost consistent through a boost bypass system. Specifically, Oldsmobile fitted the F-85’s turbocharger with a wastegate at the turbo’s inlet. This wastegate is controlled by a diaphragm and any pressure that exceeds 6 PSI is diverted from the turbo. This wastegate is also a safety device and prevents the turbo from over-speeding when the engine is at redline.
(What’s pretty neat is that, per Motor Trend, the Corvair’s turbo technically had over-speed protections, but without Oldsmobile’s expensive and complex wastegate. Instead, Chevrolet’s engineers decided to bake in enough exhaust back pressure that the Corvair’s turbo wouldn’t run away. Of course, in practice, there were situations where a Corvair’s turbine could overspeed).
Embedded below is a Jetfire advertisement. Click here if you cannot see it.
Things got really crazy when it came to how Oldsmobile engineers tried to retain something resembling good fuel economy in the Jetfire’s 215 cubic inch “Turbo-Rocket” V8. One of the quirks of turbocharging is detonation. Boosted air is hotter (compressing air adds energy to it, speeding up its molecules, which bounce against one another and against cylinder walls, yielding higher temperatures; also, there is some heat transfer from the turbo itself to the incoming air). This already hot air is then heated even more during the compression stroke, and runs the risk of causing the air and fuel mixture to detonate at an inopportune time, potentially causing destructive engine damage.
The simple method to get around this, as was employed by the Corvair team, is to lower the engine’s compression ratio. This has the side effect of making the engine thirstier and also slowing an engine’s low-end response. The Olds team wanted their engine to be both thrifty enough and powerful, so the turbocharged version of the aluminum Rockette V8 had the same 10.25-to-1 compression.
Alright, so how did Oldsmobile prevent detonation? It turned to aviation technology. Oldsmobile fitted the F-85 Jetfires with bottles of what it called “Turbo Rocket Fluid,” which contained 50 percent methanol, 50 percent distilled water, and small amounts of lubricants. Oldsmobile sprayed this water and alcohol mix into the throttle body when the engine was under boost, cooling down the charge and preventing detonation.
Additional safety protections in this system involved a metering valve (consisting of a double-float and valve assembly) and a secondary butterfly in the throttle body. If the boost was too high, or if fluid didn’t reach the valve, the secondary butterfly would close, limiting the air and fuel mixture from the carburetor to the engine. This system, which was all mechanical using pressure or vacuum from the intake manifold, was effectively like an early version of limp mode when it reverted to a failure mode.
If my explanation wasn’t clear, here’s how Autocar described it back then:
“The nozzle is located in a part of the passage that forms a long venturi to obtain the desired pressure drop; the ratio of fuel to fluid remains close to 10:1 throughout the engine’s rpm range.”
Of course, in a naturally aspirated engine, this drop is created when a cylinder falls during the intake stroke, whereas turbo tech allows air to be sent into the engine at a pressure above atmospheric (‘boost’ pressure).
“Under cruising or coasting conditions, with the throttle partly open, there is a high vacuum in the intake manifold, so there is a check valve in the metering system to prevent fluid from being sucked into the engine at low or nil boost pressure. When the boost pressure in the manifold reaches 1psi, a diaphragm in the fluid metering valve opens a ball check valve, and the pressure in the fluid container tank forces the fluid through a jet to the injection nozzle.”
Oldsmobile’s Jet Age Turbo Car
All of this engineering was brilliant on paper. The 215 cubic inch Rockette V8, now called the Turbo-Rocket V8, saw performance raise from 185 HP and 230 lb-ft of torque to 215 HP and 300 lb-ft of torque. It breathed from a Rochester one-barrel side-draft carburetor, featured stronger mean bearings and connecting rod bearings, as well as strengthened valve heads and seats.
Buyers had a choice between a four-speed manual or a three-speed Roto-Hydramatic, which most buyers getting the auto. Wet, the car was 2,850 pounds, and you got a 3.36 rear axle. The F-85 Jetfire’s price was $3,045, or $350 more than the Oldsmobile F-85 Cutlass in which it was based on.
The Jetfire wasn’t just a first-generation GM Y-body with a turbocharger. The Jetfire was given a sort of unique look that was created by grafting the hardtop from a Buick Skylark onto an F-85 convertible. Inside, the occupants got bucket seats, a center console, a floor-mounted shifter, and a neat gauge that indicated either fuel economy or power.
Despite the engineering triumph of Oldsmobile, the F-85 Jetfire was fraught with issues right from launch. In September 1962, Motor Trend published its road test, and the publication didn’t hold back any punches.
Motor Trend‘s first complaint was that it couldn’t get its hands on a manual, so it had to conduct its testing with the automatic. The first sign of trouble happened during 60 mph testing, when the Jetfire hit 60 mph in 10.2 seconds. The publication said it conducted its acceleration tests six time and that was the best the car could do.
This was a problem because, as Motor Trend noted, when it tested a sedan with the 155 HP, naturally aspirated version of the same engine and an automatic transmission, that car hit 60 mph in 12.7 seconds. The publication didn’t see enough improvement for the added complexity. The review didn’t stop there, and pointed to its test of the Pontiac Tempest in 1962, which hit 60 mph in 10.5 seconds despite having a weaker 166 HP engine.
Motor Trend believed that the Jetfire’s failure to launch was two-fold. The first problem was in the transmission, with the publication saying that the box took longer than a second to change gears. The other problem claimed by the review was in the bypass system. In the publication’s testing, the engine pulled strongly to 4,600 RPM, and then fell flat on its face and wouldn’t rev any higher. Then, the transmission shifted gears, the revs reduced to 3,100 RPM, and the car would cross the quarter mile at 3,800 RPM. Motor Trend described the feeling as being like driving a naturally aspirated car with too small of a carburetor.
The publication figured that what happened is that the bypass system wasn’t allowing the Jetfire to live up to its full potential, and thus the engine fell flat at sky-high RPM. What was also reportedly frustrating was that the boost gauge was pointless, as it didn’t really indicate boost and maxed itself out as soon as you got on the throttle, anyway.
Other complaints included non-power brakes that faded quickly and the requirement for premium fuel only.
But not everything was bad. Motor Trend reported that the wizardry of Oldsmobile’s engineers resulted in negligible lag at low speeds. The car also averaged 14.1 mpg despite its sporting ambitions. Reviewers also felt that the car handled reasonably well, was comfortable, and was otherwise a decent car. The publication ended its review by saying that the Oldsmobile’s turbocharging experiment wasn’t too satisfying, but it hoped that GM would continue to refine turbos, because the promise was huge. Autocar was more impressed:
Our report said: “Maximum efficiency is designed to come in between 2000 and 2200rpm, but boost remains high up to 5000rpm. Maximum power is developed at 4600rpm, as against 4800rpm for unblown versions of the V8.
“In normal driving, the turbine will cruise at 40,000rpm. For maximum acceleration, the throttle is opened wide, and the turbocharger has a remarkably quick response, accelerating to about 80,000rpm in less than a second.”
The most amazing part of all this, Autocar’s man considered, was that “the turbocharger is absolutely silent and free of vibration, not only at normal speeds but also when accelerating, reaching maximum and when idling.”
Too Ambitious, Too Soon?
Americans were impressed, too, and started buying up Jetfires to live out their Jet Age dreams. Unfortunately, as Hagerty notes, these owners would have to deal with some major headaches. Embedded above is a dealership promotional film, and it’s deeply weird. Click here if you can’t see it.
Remember the bit earlier about the Turbo Rocket Fluid? In theory, each five-quart bottle was supposed to last 500 miles to 2,000 miles. However, depending on how hard you drove the car, you could empty it out in only 250 miles. Many owners then forgot to replace the fluid, leading to their cars entering into that aforementioned “limp mode.” The mechanical parts that made up the system were also prone to leaking and failing. As you can guess, yep, that put the car into a low power state, too. If the leak was bad enough, the fluid could flow through the intake manifold and into the cylinders when the engine was off. When you next tried to start the engine, it could hydrolock.
That wasn’t all, either, as the engine’s oil pump was insufficient to lubricate and cool the turbo. Another issue was that if you parked the car immediately after driving it hard, the Turbo Rocket Fluid bottle might be left pressurized. As Hagerty noted, there wasn’t even a service manual at first, and Oldsmobile dealer techs didn’t even know how to fix them, either.
It took General Motors a while to address these issues. The Jetfire sold for only two model years, 1962 and 1963, over which 9,607 copies were built. In 1964, GM implemented a fix for the car remaining pressurized when parked with a relief valve. But this wasn’t enough. By 1965, the Jetfire had proven to be unreliable enough that many owners just didn’t want to deal with the turbo anymore. At the request of owners, dealers began removing the turbo systems and replacing them with four-barrel carburetors and new exhaust manifolds. Allegedly, by 1970, GM had converted 80 percent of the Jetfires to natural aspiration.
Ultimately, General Motors went back to building iron block V8s. The muscle car era rolled around, and cars were equipped with ever larger V8s that made more power than the Turbo-Rocket without forced induction. Turbocharging would gain traction again a decade later in the 1970s.
In the decades since then, one man, Jim Noel, has been singlehandedly bringing the old turbo dream back to life. Noel restores the Jetfires that come his way and upgrades them with higher flow oil pumps, pressure relief valves, and other fixes that make these cars more reliable today than when they were new.
Unfortunately, the Jetfire was a rare car when it was new, and it’s believed that these cars have a low survival rate. Thus, don’t be surprised to pay something like $50,000 or so when you find a good one for sale.
Despite all of these issues, the Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire marked an important milestone in automotive history. Oldsmobile’s engineers were ambitious and tried to make a boosted V8 with lots of power, decent fuel economy, and little lag. This car was decades ahead of its time, even if it pushed the limits of early 1960s technology.
Today, turbos are all over the place, and they’ve been refined into something you can ignore for most of the life of your vehicle. Turbos are in everything from economy cars to supercars. But they all had to start from somewhere, and back in 1962, General Motors didn’t just make history once, but twice!
If we’re talking about that pictured gauge that says Power / Economy, that looks like a vacuum gauge to me. That’s how they operate. Several cars had vacuum gauges at that time. My ’65 Barracuda had one. Chrysler seemed especially enamored of them. The gas mileage display on many modern cars uses the same methodology. My Subaru had an LED bar gauge in the dash that indicated when you were driving economically.
As was often the case, GM was innovative, then abandoned the project just before they got it right.
I worked for Garrett Pneumatic Systems Division from mid ’85 to mid ’86 as a Manufacturing Engineer. One of the chunks of hardware I got to review and work on was a turbocharger body. Since I mostly worked on Aerospace stuff, getting a turbo to work on was a fun diversion.
Mighty brave of them to keep the 10.25:1 compression ratio in those days. Though that does mean that if the thing was in “limp mode”, it wouldn’t drive much differently than the non-turbo version at least. 80’s to to today’s turbo cars are pretty much dogs if there is no boost to be had.
When I bought my ’92 Saab 900T convertible the owner had the boost dialed back to nothing because his teenage daughter had been using the car – it was slower than a non-turbo 900. Very easy to wind the wastegate actuator adjustment back to where it belonged. Interesting early Saab turbo quirk – when the cruise control is active, the car is limited to “base boost” – the default wastegate setting (5ish PSI). Cruise disables the APC system that allowed much, much more boost via knock detection. Made for an easy way to test base boost – just have the cruise control engaged and floor it! I also had an ;’85 Saab 900T that the APC controller box failed to “unlimited boost” – it just kept the wastegate shut no matter what. That was fun for a minute, but since I am not a fan of blowing up engines (or given it was a Saab 900T, gearboxes), I fixed that in short order.
Funny how I’ve owned over 40 cars in my lifetime and not one had a turbo or supercharger.
I want the corvair. Way cooler
Probably easier to live with, too, no extra fluid, and no pesky radiator and water pump nonsense to deal with, either
I have a naturally aspirated one, but its been shockingly dependable for its age and easy to keep going, I’ve road tripped it around a good chunk of the eastern seaboard over the past 4 years
I had a shockingly dependable one as well a few years ago and it was pointed out to me that in this day and age they are probably all pretty dependable. The ones that were going to die already bought the farm a few decades ago.
Are you aware of the mid engine conversions?
Extremely slick!
V8 too.
I would appreciate the opportunity to restomod a Jetfire with some form of overdrive transmission, revised differential ratio, and rebuild the engine with later turbo technology.
Drove and wrote about a Jetfire for Special Interest Autos years ago. It was a beautiful car with some clever engineering. It felt light and quick, but Motor Trend wasn’t wrong about the slush box letting it down.
I thought these cars were fascinating ever since I first learned about them a few years back. If I ever came across a ’62 F-85 project for sale, I figure that would be a good base for a modern build in the spirit of the original Jetfire. (Probably start with a base model because I imagine an actual Jetfire model might be a bit too rare)
Build an aluminum block LS engine with a modest turbo and water meth injection as essentially the modern version of what came in the original cars. For a car weighing less than 3000lbs, even a pretty mild setup putting mid 400hp to the wheels would be a ton of fun.
During WWII all auto manufacturers were contributing. So what is confusing, wasn’t a vast amount of R&D on turbos already available to all? Did any aeronautical applications use intercoolers?
Yes, they used intercoolers. I think the reasons you didn’t see more of it sooner was cost of R&D and production, cheap fuel to just make bigger engines, reliability of metallurgy for the application, and a difference in operation. Aircraft used it mostly to maintain power at altitude while cars use it to make power for acceleration, which is a very different purpose. Aircraft engines were enormous and ran in fairly narrow rpm ranges with a low max engine speed, so there wasn’t really a lot of applicable information translatable to automobile use. That might be why GM went to diesel specialists instead of aircraft people when they were working on it—while diesel is different from gasoline engines, the purpose of having the turbo was similar.
I had no idea war planes had turbos. I appreciate the amount of research you put into all of your articles, Mercedes. I learn new things every time I read one of your posts, no matter what kind of winged or wheeled type of vehicle it may be about! You are one of the many reasons I subscribe to The Autopian.
Power normalizing forced induction (single, 2-speed, or 2-stage supercharging or turbocharging also referred to as turbosupercharging) were very common in WW2 due to the altitudes of engagement (particularly bombing missions, so escorts and interceptors, too) and weight of weapons and armor. As Mercedes mentioned, it was more to maintain power at altitude than adding total power. Water and methanol injection were also used to varying extents. The P-47 was so famously large because it was pretty much built around the Pratt and Whitney R2800 and a massive turbocharging system (turbo and intercooler were behind the cockpit with piping running underneath) and even used the exhaust for a bit of added thrust. As a bonus for the pilot, the turbo system could also absorb some enemy ammunition.
awesome, a bullet proof vest with power maintaining benefits, win, win!
P-47’s were absolute units. One guy flew too low on a strafing mission in Europe and hit a telegraph pole with a wing. He flew back to the UK with a chunk of pole stuck in it. Another guy flew into a mountain in fog and lived. Robert Johnson famously got shot up in a dogfight, the plane started to go down in flames, he couldn’t bail because a cannon round jammed the canopy closed, but he was able to get it level. Barely able to maneuver due to damage or see much with blood from a head wound and oil streaked all over the windshield from rounds to the engine (the R2800 was known for continued running even with several cylinders shot out), he set course for home when a German FW190 found him. The fighter raked his Thunderbolt side to side with machine gun fire, then flew up alongside Johnson to shake his head in disbelief that the plane was still flying. I believe the German repeated this twice more before presumably running out of ammo, flying up to salute Johnson, and peeling off. When Johnson got back to base in the UK, he began counting holes in his plane starting from the tail. He said he stopped counting after either 100 or 300 (I forget) without having to move from the spot he started at. It’s an incredible story and there are many others of the sheer ruggedness of that beast (and firepower—before transferring to Mustangs, there is a report of Tuskeegee airmen sinking a German destroyer with ’47s, though they were mainly great at taking out trains and even tanks, reportedly by “skipping” rounds to ricochet into the thinner armor underneath, though I imagine attacking the thinner top armor was a more common way of destroying them).
Thank you for sharing, very interesting stuff!
As now, aircraft got advanced engineering first, so early race cars were often powered by plane engines.
I saw a very early race car at Collier’s that would do 112 mph.
Exotic metals, supercharged, small displacement for the era.
French engine, possibly French car.
Nothing needed altitude compensation like aircraft.
The Mustangs got all the glory, but the Thunderbolts did most of the heavy lifting in Europe. Units indeed – they are absolutely MASSIVE airplanes! With good reason the A-10 “Warthog” is officially the Thunderbolt II.
The Thunderbolts could have gotten that glory, too, had drop tanks not been locked out by bomber command earlier on. How many men died so stubborn brass could maintain that the bombers could defend themselves? By the time they relented, the Mustang had the proper engine and was a cheaper rig to send over (didn’t hurt that it looked better in photos, films, and posters). A lot of pilots still preferred the ‘Bolt for its durability and room and the 56th FG refused to convert over.
B-17 turbo impellers are on the bottom surface of the engine nacelles. Very visible if you get the chance to walk around one of these old warbirds.
You would think that the Buick 215 aluminum V8 and the Olds 215 aluminum V8 were the same.
They were close, but there were enough differences where lots of stuff didn’t carry over.
Example: The Buick (later Rover) V8 had 5 bolts per cylinder on the heads, the Olds had 6.
Also, honorable mention, of all the OEMs to offer a turbo gasoline engine in the same era? International had a turbo 4 cylinder option on the Scout in 1965(or 66?)
That was common for the time. Even the same displacement iron V8s would have different internals and characteristics from division to division. It seems so odd today. Later, the engines got shared between divisions and some people sued when their Oldsmobile had a “lowly” Chevy engine (or something along those lines).
A lot of the GM engines were named a few cubic inches over from what they actually measured. In the case of the 4 “350s”, it was an effort to level the playing field for brands that, while on the same team, were also competing with each other.
The GM “Divisions” really were run as all but completely separate companies in those days, and generally shared very little. The badge engineering really didn’t start until the 70s.
Let’s face it, if it didn’t need rocket fuel, they would have offered it anyway.
Was Turbo Rocket Fluid available in stores or only at dealers? Having to visit a parts counter every 500 miles would get old fast.
It’s windshield washer fluid, essentially
Yeah, its just 50-50 water and methanol with a very small bit of Alemite water-soluble water pump lubricant
True that! At least with blue def needed for modern diesel engines if the retailer sales that kind of fuel, they’ll have the magic solution to go with it.
Wow did GM overestimate their owners’ capabilities and attentiveness. Asking Joe Blow to monitor a system that may or may not dump water directly into the cylinders is some unsubstantiated confidence.
A friend of mine owned one.
I would expect the complexity would ward off anyone without some appreciation of it.
Gramps always talked about the 215 aluminum v8 that he had. it was the NA versions and when it got on the high end of the heat range when pulling into a place to quickly stop off for gas or something it would sometimes lock up and not start until the thing cooled down. I think it was thermal expansion and dissimilar metals that was the culprit in those early days of aluminum engines, but I never really looked into that engine much. though I know it had steel cylinder sleeves in the aluminum block and employed aluminum pitons as well.
I think this article tip-toed around the elephant in the room. This tech was not ready for mainstream use. Racing, airplanes, ok. So it was gimicky and required more care than the average consumer was willing to bother with. GM should have kept this in-house, continued R&D, worked with turbo companies, etc so 5-10 years later it would be perfected (or much closer to it). It’s almost like marketing heard of this and it was rushed to market, then left to die on the vine.
That being said, I still see several Cruzes and Veranos, Minis, etc., fogging up the road like a WW2 destroyer. It is hard to design for neglect, but that is the lot of most cars in life.
Yeah, this is the truth. Hell people got a “bad taste” in their mouth in the 70s/80s from turbos failing on all sorts of cars (and some trucks/SUVs). Really it was the same story, poor maintenance (for most).
Some were just dogshit though. This is also the era of oil cooled turbos. Water cooled turbos didn’t arrive until (I think) the very end of the 1980s.
A Jetfire came up for sale at a car donation auction near here (unrestored and I don’t think it had its turbo) and I immediately told my Oldsmobile guru, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with that engine. If it wasn’t an Olds big block, it just didn’t get the respect from a lot of Olds people. Probably different today since rare and bizarre is more fun, but in the 90’s and 00’s, Olds boomers were all about the 455.
Turbo rocket fluid is what my fraternity called booze in the late 1980s.
Ironically, the ‘Turbo Rocket Fluid’ is booze. Just it’s Methanol not Ethanol, so it will kill you even though it’s only 100 proof
Blindness, nerve system damage, followed by liver and kidney failure, followed by death are pretty typical, in that order, for methanol poisoning.
Yep, that’s the good stuff lol
Fantastic write-up!
Rare Cars did a VIDEO on this just a few months ago, and went into some good details as well.
From the end of the war until about 1965, GM management let designers and engineers run wild. There were too many innovations and new ideas to list here. Starting around 1965, corporate management decided to put profits above everything else, and most of the innovation stopped.
That’s about the time the race to bottom started, signaling the beginnings of late stage capitalism. And here we are.
Yeah short term profit driven capitalism will always eat itself alive. I am a firm believer that capitalism without regulation will kill itself 100 percent of the time.
There is a Frontline docko about two steel plants that must be the classic example of what a documentary can do.
Started at similar times, one went safe and ethical, the other as though controlled by the Wicked Witch of the Southeast
Well, old GM went bankrupt so the math checks out.
GM… always ahead of all the other manufacturers out there… and then every time they always drop the ball.