A Quick Guide to the Whereabouts of All Nine Chrysler Turbine Cars

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Chrysler built a fleet of 55 turbine-powered cars in the early 1960s. The company lent them to the public in one of the biggest public relation stunts ever concocted. After the cars were test driven by 203 families, Chrysler rounded them up and destroyed 46 for tax reasons. Why did Chrysler destroy the cars? The company never intended to keep all 55 so it paid temporary import duties on most of them – which meant that they had to be destroyed or shipped out of the country when Chrysler was done.

Nine Turbine Cars remain. I've tracked the survivors over the years because these cars fascinate me (I even wrote a book about them). But, they move around and even change hands occasionally.

Chrysler donated six of the survivors to museums and kept three. Those six were sent to: The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, The Smithsonian, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, The National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, the Detroit Historical Society, and The National Automobile Museum (Harrah’s). The museum cars were not in running condition. People familiar with the program say that internal parts of the turbine engines were removed, rendering them inoperable. The three cars kept by Chrysler ran and worked as intended.

Interestingly, Chrysler sent each museum crated turbine engines. The folks at the St. Louis Museum of Transportation swapped the crate motor for the nonfunctional one in the car and got it running. This meant that there were actually four running Turbine Cars, and five non-running. That would change.

Harrah’s sold its Turbine Car to Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza. Later, he sold it to a well-known collector named Frank Kleptz. It was non-running when he got it but his friend Jay Leno made some phone calls to friends at Chrysler and managed to get an operable turbine. This raised the population of running Chrysler Turbine Cars to five.

A while later, Jay Leno talked Chrysler into selling him one of the three Turbine Cars. It now resides in his famous Big Dog Garage and you can find video of him driving it around the streets of southern California.