Ian Wagstaff is one of those people who understands that a car has every bit as much of a personality as the more animated individuals that drive them. Here he looks back at a car that illustrates that the ACO’s support and encouragement of new technologies is nothing new.
It was unpainted, bulbous, arguably ugly. It also appeared on the front cover of the first ever copy of Motor Sport magazine that I purchased – May 1963 – which gave it an almost sacred importance. Two years later I got the chance to see it in the flesh when it was demonstrated at Silverstone during the British Grand Prix meeting, taking a photograph of it with my Kodak Brownie 127. However, ‘the flesh’ had changed, as the car was wreathed in a far more slippery, coupe body with pointed nose and square-cut tail. Today you can see it in the main hall of the British Motor Industry Heritage Museum at Gaydon. I refer to the Rover-BRM gas turbine, spiritual predecessor of the cars of Garage 56.
The Rover-BRM, which as Motor Sport’s Denis Jenkinson pointed out should have been called a ‘BRM-Rover’, was the result of experimental work carried out on gas turbine-engined cars by Rover. Prototype, road-going saloon cars had been built in the 1950s, one of which was demonstrated at Le Mans in 1962, leading to a suggestion from the ACO that Rover might like to compete for a special award at the 24-hours of 1963. The idea was not to actually race the car but to run it alongside the other competitors in an event of its own.
BRM designer Peter Berthon cut a crashed 1961 Grand Prix BRM P57, chassis ‘571’, in half and fitted it with a two-seater width tubular centre section. A Rover 150bhp 2S/150 two-shaft gas turbine engine drove a BRM differential unit. There were just two speeds, forward and reverse; the two pedals controlled the fuel to the turbine and the brakes, the latter wide enough to be used by either foot. As the turbine was a free-running vertical constant-speed unit running at 35-40,000rpm it was essential for the drivers to keep the power on through the corners. That meant they had to keep the turbine up to working rpm with the right foot while braking for the left, so that there was no delay once the brakes were released. The turbine took time to regain peak revs if they were allowed to drop too low.
The drivers were BRM’s own Formula One pair of Graham Hill and Richie Ginther, it being the Californian who had appeared on that front page of Motor Sport in a photo taken when the car made its public debut at the 1963 Le Mans test day. Hill was the first to drive the car though, remarking that it sounded like a Boeing 707 airliner when he tested at the Motor Industry Research Association track near Nuneaton.
The car had been painted a patriotic green by the time of the race. It also carried the number ‘00’, which seemed logical in indicating that it was in a contest of its own, but, in my opinion, appears mildly ludicrous when used on conventional cars today. During practice, the tail had showed a tendency to lift at speed, which meant that the car was now fitted with the rear spoiler and lower front wings. Changes had also been made to the windscreen.
To start, the driver had to have one foot on the brake and, with the other, press a foot button to apply the power. Once this had been achieved he then had to take his foot off the brake and the car would accelerate slowly forward. This was so slow that it was flagged away from the grid last and from a position that looked straight down the track as opposed to the then traditional angle.
The car performed magnificently and, had it been in the race itself, it would have finished in eighth place overall. It had certainly won the 25,000NF (about £1,800) award for averaging over 150km/h and was reckoned to have been the only car in the race that had not required any mechanical adjustment. Autosport magazine’s John Bolster pointed out how it had underlined the reliability of the alternator as opposed to the dynamos, which, he said, “wilted during the hours of darkness.” In Bolster’s opinion the Rover-BRM could be developed to out-perform any of the conventional cars that had been entered that year. Other eminent journalists sang its praise. David Hodges saw it as “perhaps the forerunner of a new era” while Edward Eves said that its performance was “proof that the (gas turbine engine) was not as delicate a flower as some would have us believe.”
Such had been the success that it was decided to enter the race proper the following year, competing in the 2-litre class, a way of comparing the size of a piston engine with a gas turbine having been agreed. Motor Panels (Coventry) built the new GT-style body. Corning Glass Works had developed an inexpensive glass-ceramic material, Pyroceram, which was capable of withstanding very high temperature and which meant that the heat exchangers no longer had to be made of thin, unreliable material. The rear suspension was also arranged differently to maintain the handling characteristics of the open top 1963 guise. The car ran at the April trials but was withdrawn from the race as it was felt that more endurance running was required to repeat the reliability of the previous year.
The car was entered again in 1965. Berthon and Noel Penny, the chief gas turbine engineer at Rover, had worked on a comparison formula to equate gas turbine and petrol engines. With a nominal horsepower of 145bhp (at 150oC) that meant the car should have been in the 1.6-litre class. The ACO disagreed, at least for 1965, and the Rover-BRM once again found itself in the 2-litre category.
The car was thoroughly tested with trials that included five 24-hour runs on a rig especially built for the purpose. Two Corning heat exchangers had now been installed. The two discs, which each accommodated a large number of thin-walled parallel holes and were driven from the gas generator shaft at about 20rpm, were mounted either side of the engine. Modifications were also made to the bodywork. The most distinctive of these with the addition of twin ram-type air intakes on the tail unit, these having been fitted to improve the engine performance at high speed. The front end was also slightly changed to incorporate long-range driving lights and side flasher units. The headlights rotated into a flush position when not in use.
BRM’s Grand Prix driver pairing was again to be used, although Jackie Stewart had now replaced Ginther. The Scot did not get a chance to test the race car before the 24-hours but gained experience using the Rover T4 gas turbine prototype saloon on both the public roads and at MIRA. He was advised not to stop at pedestrian crossings as the heat from the rear of the car could burn the paintwork of a vehicle behind. Sir Jackie once told me that the biggest difference between the Rover-BRM and conventional racing cars was “the enormous delay”. The smaller the turbine, the longer it took to get up the revs. The anticipation required was like “a balancing act”. Sir Jackie also said that, with no engine retard and no gears to shift, the braking was “terrible”. He summed up the experience: “One, the sound issue was totally different; two, there was an enormous delay in acceleration response and three, there was a problem of engine retard. Apart from that it was okay!”
The car was also slower than it should have been and Sir Jackie recalled being overtaken by a Triumph Spitfire on the Mulsanne straight. His friend and eventual winner of the race, Jochen Rindt would wave two fingers at him every time he passed in his Ferrari 250LM.
Nevertheless, the car gradually worked its way up the leader board while having to make one unscheduled pit stop late on a Sunday morning. By the afternoon the engine began to overheat. It was eventually discovered that some of its compressor vanes had been damaged possibly as a result of the entry of foreign body. As a result the turbine inlet temperature has increased.
Despite this, the car finished the race on 283 laps, albeit at an average speed around 9mph slower than two years previously. It was second in class and 10th out of the 14 cars is still running. As the highest placed all-British entry it was also the recipient of that year’s Motor Trophy. There had been a considerable improvement in fuel consumption to 13.52mpg. Ten pit stops had been made, 176.5 gallons of paraffin consumed and three pints of oil. The tyres were never changed, the brake pads but once.
It was hoped that a developed version would appear the next year but this was never to happen and Rover ran down its gas turbine programme. The only gas turbine cars to have appeared at Le Mans since were the Howmets that ran later in the decade but heavy fuel consumption proved that they could not be competitive.
If you are driving along the M40 and have time to spare as you arrive at Junction 12, take the road to Gaydon. There, at the Heritage Motor Centre, you will find a display dedicated to Rover’s gas turbine programme. Highlight is the Rover-BRM itself. A former press officer at the museum once described it to me as the collection’s “piece de resistance”. You can’t argue with that.
Ian Wagstaff
