In October 1963, Chrysler President, Lynn A. Townsend, announced a program to distribute 500 Chrysler Turbine cars to selected families across the USA.
Each household selected would have free use of a Chrysler Turbine car for six months. After that, the car would go to another family for six months.
This, "Chrysler Turbine Car Consumer Delivery Program", ran from 29 October 1963 to 28 January 1966. A total of 203 households received Turbine cars for six months of daily use.
It would all be just an interesting bit of history, except one of the families selected lived less than a mile from my house!
This was the talk of the town! A Chrysler Turbine car made weekly drives on the main road right through my neighborhood.
The summer of 1965 saw kids hanging around the street all day waiting to see, and hear, this amazing car pass by.
Families would have meals on the front porch or the front lawn, just in case the Turbine car drove by.
Me, and a few of the lads, got on our bikes and searched the greater Logan Park area until we found the house of Mr. Charles Hodges, and family.
There was the Chrysler Turbine car, all clean and looking amazing - but we were just kids and no one was brave enough to approach the house.
At least I found out just how close the Hodges family lived to mine.
By 1966, there was little news from Chrysler as to what was coming next.
Chrysler's Turbine engine program created at least 8 variants over 10 years, maybe more.
The few news reports at the time mentioned the "high cost to manufacture", compared to the piston engine.
The 1979 Chrysler bankruptcy and government bailout required Chrysler to abandon all "alternative powerplant" research immediately.
This most surely killed the Turbine engine program at Chrysler, and at all other manufacturers as well.
