Rover BRM Gas Turbine Racing Car '63
The Rover-BRM was a prototype gas turbine-powered racing car, jointly developed in the early 1960s by the British companies Rover and British Racing Motors (BRM).
Rover had already been working with gas turbines for road vehicles since World War II . A series of potential road cars had also been produced, from the early prototype Jet 1 through the more developed examples T2, T3 & T4. T4 had even displayed demonstration laps around the Le Mans circuit, before the 1962 race. Seeing an opportunity for even more prestige, Rover decided to enter a gas turbine car into the race. A prize was to be awarded for the first gas turbine car to complete 3,600 km over the 24 hours.
A crucial step in this plan was a chance meeting between William Martin-Hurst, MD of Rover, and Sir Alfred Owen of Rover's component supplier Rubery Owen, but more relevantly also of the Formula 1 constructors BRM. BRM supplied the chassis of Richie Ginther's crash-damaged car from the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix. A custom open-top spyder body was then built in aluminium, with the turbine mid-mounted ahead of a single-speed transaxle.
The first test runs were at the MIRA track in April 1963, driven by Graham Hill who described it thus, “You’re sitting in this thing that you might call a motor car and the next minute it sounds as if you’ve got a 707 just behind you, about to suck you up and devour you like an enormous monster.”
The gas turbine engine was of typical practice for Rover, with a single centrifugal compressor, a single combustion chamber and a free turbine driving the output shaft, separate from the turbine that drove the compressor. It was rated at 150 hp. The top speed is quoted to be 229 km/h.
Racing career:
The car ran at Le Mans, carrying the race number "00" as an experimental car. The turbine engine was judged to be equivalent to a 2 litre, but was permitted twice the usual fuel allowance. Le Mans has always taken an interest in fuel efficiency and some classes depend on achieving particular figures.
Graham Hill and Richie Ginther, who had past experience of the same chassis in a different guise the year before, drove in the race.
The 3,600 km figure was achieved with hours to spare, and with peak speeds down the Mulsanne Straight exceeding 220 km/h. The overall averages were of 172.2 and 6.97 mpg. As the only car in its class it was unplaced, but its performance by a petrol engined car would have placed it in 8th place.
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