Steve Lehto

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: A short, concise history of the very thing the title declares: The coolest creation ever to come out of Detroit!





My Review: Oh wow! Oh cool! Oh my GOD why didn't they make this?! Well, after reading this book, I know why: It was too far ahead of its time, and when its time came, the company was on the ropes. The author spoke to everyone he could find still living who participated in the most amazing PR campaign of all time: Chrysler made 50 of these babies show more and, over the course of 1964-1966, lent them out to 203 drivers for 90 days apiece. The 50 cars racked up over 1 million miles of travel, and had less than 1% downtime in all of that driving. Reliability was clearly not a huge issue. But what *was* a huge issue was the way the turbines needed to be manufactured, basically each one by hand. There was, in that pre-computer-control era, no way to automate the process of making the engine parts.

But then the what-if machine kicks in: The cars didn't need to use gasoline, or even petroleum products...they ran one car on tequila, and another on peanut oil. Had manufacture gone ahead, perhaps advances in technology would've speeded up computer-aided design and production. Imagine a world where the car smells like a deep fryer and sounds like a jet.

Lost chances. The very source of all good fiction. *turns on private bubble machine* show less

This book is not just for "car people." Steve Lehto's book is typical for the publisher - a thorough, well documented, fun, labor of love. I was 12 or 13 when these bad boys (the cars) hit the streets of Southern California. I only saw a couple of them, but even to a non-car kid these were science fictiony awesome beasts. And Mr. Lehto walks you through all aspects of their design, development, and use.

Don't expect this to be a glossy coffee table book with little substance. For its size, show more there is a lot of text and explanation. The pictures are used as documentation more than "gee whiz!" but golly, these are gee whiz cars!

Coolest thing I learned: you can create a 200 mile per hour car, but if you don't have 200 mile per hour tires there's a problem.

Second coolest thing I learned: The NASCAR rules of the time for what entailed a "stock" car. Basically, if you can sell 500 of them and they're legal on the street, then, POOF, stock car. I always thought the Dodge Daytona 500 referred to the race, but herein found out that the number 500 referred to the number of cars they had to sell (and apparently they didn't even sell 500 of them which is yet another cool fact).

Recommended for car people, non car people, aerospace engineers, and people who just think America has produced some very unique cars. These are two of them.

(My review was simultaneously posted on Amazon.com) show less

I remember when 1955 Chevys appeared on our dirt tracks sporting wings even though they did not reach the speeds for them to have any effect. Steve Lehto's coverage of the Dodge Daytonas and Plymouth Superbirds is one of the best CarTech books I have read recently. He blends his own interest in the cars with racing history and engineering insights. Couple his excellent writing with historic photos and shots of the survivors and you have a an automotive history book that is hard to put down show more and rewarding to pick up from time to time just to browse the pictures. One car book that should not be missed by muscle car or NASCAR fans. show less

Much of the history of technology is about being at the right place at the right time, and many a wonderful concept just had the misfortune to arrive at the wrong time. What one has here is the enthusiastic telling of one those episodes when the concept didn't meet the moment, as while Chrysler did build a working turbine-powered car that generated real enthusiasm, the manufacturing technology and financial foundations to put it into production just weren't there. The heart of this book is show more that Lehto was able to hunt down many of the people who participated in Chrysler's loaner program to generate real-world data, and most of them remember the experience fondly. This is despite the irony that while these cars could run on just about any fuel (a point that the author repeatedly comes back to), what they had an issue with was the standard leaded gasoline of the Sixties! show less