[kach22i]

This car is new to me, gonna be a good day.

1965 Rover-BRM Turbine Le Mans Road Racer
1965 Rover-BRM Turbine Le Mans Road Racer | Nevada Musclecars

Back in the early 1950’s the Rover Company built the JET 1, the worlds first gas turbine car. After experimenting with it for many years, Rover linked up with BRM and ran the car at Le Mans in 1963. Because the race sanctioning had no place to classify this car it ran as an “Experimental” and would have come in eighth but was “officially” unplaced. In 1965 the Rover-BRM Turbine was officially classified as a 2-litre car and was driven by World Champions Sir Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill. Graham was quoted as saying, ” it sounds like a 707 is behind you and about to devour you like some sort of enormous monster”. The engine powering the 2S/150/R was the initial evolution of small simple gas turbines of good fuel economy experiments and was rated somewhere around 145 shp.

On this, the 50th anniversary of the “official” running of the car at the famous 24 hour race at Le Mans, the car preformed well. Stewart and Hill finished 10th overall and averaged close to 99 mph. The car was shown around for a few years and in 1974 it was retired and is now placed in the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon England.