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This 1960s rocket-charger would make a million horsepower (then explode)
JUL. 17, 2014
By
Brendan McAleer
The Turbonique rocket-powered superchargers and drag axles of the ’60s were the sort of insane mail-order speed parts you bought if you wanted to bolt on a few thousand horsepower to your dragster—and didn’t mind near-certain disaster
Today’s headlines belong to the Dodge Challenger Hellcat, a 707-horsepower supercharged behemoth that’s almost comically powerful. You can’t help but love the thing, with its sledgehammer of a motor and snarling name.
And it’s got the drag-racing time slips to back up the badge, too: a 10.8-second performance in the quarter-mile, on drag radials. Or, to put it another way, not quite as fast as a mild-mannered chiropractor’s 1963 Plymouth.
Not an ordinary Plymouth, I grant you, but one equipped with a Turbonique supercharger strapped to its 426 Max Wedge engine. Think the Hellcat’s the peak of drag-racing lunacy? Not even close: when it comes to Turbonique’s brand of mail-order insanity, you might as well be comparing a soy latte to straight-up bourbon.
The word “awesome” gets thrown around so much these days, we’ve lost sight of its original meaning – something that strikes you with amazement, wonder, and fear. Turbonique was, without a doubt, the single most old-testament aftermarket automotive company that ever existed. Get in, sit down, strap in, and hold on – time for the story of the postage-paid rocket-propelled car.
Nuke ‘em from orbit
As the Iron Curtain fell across Europe, those left in the West became ever more nervous about the prospect of nuclear war. The best protection, so the thinking of the day went, was to amass an arsenal big enough to destroy the planet – that’d show those pesky Reds.
As an employee of the Martin defence subcontractor, Gene Middlebrooks was responsible for work on the Pershing ballistic missile, a medium-range solid-propellant rocket. The guy in charge of the factory that built them, Edward Uhl, had invented the bazooka. The factory was based in Orlando, Florida. Explosives, rocketry, firepower, Florida: what other elements need to be present in the genesis of a really bad idea? Oh yeah—a gearhead.
Middlebrooks was certainly one of those. A respected mechanical engineer, he tinkered at home with the idea of self-powered superchargers, including a battery-operated forced induction turbine—today, Audi is just on the cusp of bringing a commercial version of this idea to market. However, in the 1950s, batteries were too heavy, so Middlebrooks needed something else as a source of power. What to do? He sat at his work bench in the rocket factory, tapping his pencil idly on a blank sheet of paper. In the rocket factory. Where there are rockets.
Uh-oh.
“Turbonique dubbed the rocket-propelled
go-kart unsafe for quarter-mile competition.
Not that they wouldn’t sell you one anyway.”
Rocket-supercharged!
Turbonique was founded in 1962, with its first product the supercharger that propelled that 426-equipped Plymouth down the track at Hellcat-whippin’ speed. It was a pretty interesting piece of equipment, cast in aluminium. It looked a bit like a turbocharger, but rather than using the waste exhaust gasses of an internal combustion engine to drive the turbine, it ran by burning N-propyl nitrate. Marketed under the Turbonique trade-name Thermoline, it’s better just to call it what it was: rocket fuel.
The effect of flipping a switch on this rocket-propelled supercharger was, um, dramatic. First, liquid oxygen would be sparked to life, then the Thermoline fed in as the turbine whizzed to 100,000 rpm. Dyno-testing a Ford 409 V8, power was proven to jump from 405 horsepower to 839 horsepower, with the proviso that it probably wasn’t safe to run the system for more than five minutes. No kiddin’.
Dr. Gerald Guest, the chiropractor at the wheel of the dragstrip-blitzing Mopar, called the performance boost “most gratifying,” and recorded a trap speed of 235 km/h (146 mph). Middleton dubbed his creation the Auxiliary Power (AP) Supercharger, and proceeded to sell multiple copies through his mail-order catalogue. By the middle-sixties, it wasn’t even close to the craziest thing Turbonique sold.
(Photo courtesy Mecum Auctions)
The Tobacco King
By all accounts, Zach Reynolds was one of the wildest men you’d ever want to meet. Heir to the Reynolds Tobacco company, he had the funds to do pretty much whatever he liked, and what Reynolds wanted to do was smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Reynolds’ 1963 Ford Galaxie was already the kind of car that could make its presence felt on the dragstrip. Hopped up with a 427ci V8 and a quad-carb Latham supercharger, the Galaxie menaced with its jacked-up suspension and all-black paint. And then Turbonique got hold of it.
They installed something called a “drag axle”on Reynold’s Ford, a mutated-looking lump of aluminium that hung off the back differential like some sort of metallic tumour. Aside from the need to plumb in Thermoline as the fuel source, it weighed only 50 kg (110 lbs) or so.
When ignited, the drag-axle worked in an entirely unique way. Essentially, the rocket fuel spun a turbine that this time provided direct-drive power right to the axle. Think of it in terms of a rocket-propelled moped, with the power getting to the ground in addition to whatever the internal combustion engine is putting out.
Just how much power is where it gets interesting. Reynold’s Galaxie, which he called “The Tobacco King,” was licensed for the street, and he was just crazy enough to light up his Turbonique on the street now and again. However, it was the official Turbonique drag car that gives some idea of just how powerful the drag axle really was.
A flat-black VW Beetle with beefy rear tires, the Black Widow looked about as mean as it’s possible for a Bug to do. Which is to say, not all that mean. When it lined up against Tommy Ivo’s quad-engined, four-wheel-drive Showboat at the dragstrip, it was a mismatch for the ages. Showboat’s thirty-two pistons churned to life in a haze of nitromethane, and it launched off the line with a brutal roar. Roy Drew, driver of the Turbonique car, hit the button for the drag axle and hung on for dear life.
Lighting off the Black Widow’s rocket axle provided a colossal 1,300 horsepower, and the little black Beetle smoked Showboat through the traps, running a 9.36-second elapsed time. If you’re counting, that’s a Bug that’ll outrun a Bugatti.
The drag axle retailed for between $2,500 and $5,000, depending on what accessories you ordered it with, and if that wasn’t enough for you, Turbonique would also sell actual bolt-on horizontal-thrust rocket engines. Sweet mother of pearl.
A tad explode-y
Truly, this was the bleeding edge of 1960s technology, but as might be expected, the whole bleeding part came to be taken quite literally. Turbonique’s rocket motors often exploded, particularly when the fuel pooled back in the combustion chamber when drivers backed off the throttle.
That’s just what happened with “Turbo-Sonic,” a three-wheeled jet-shaped craft built by Dick Dean out of famed customizer George Barris’ workshop. Now fully operational, thanks to the work of the Bradford, Ontario-based Guild of Automotive Restorers, the Turbo-Sonic is kept away from the dragstrip as it’s a bit of a handful.
“The Turbo-Sonic dragster is equipped with cable brakes the likes of a bicycle,” explains Thomas Douglas, the Guild’s head of special projects and research. “The front wheel makes trying to make even slight course corrections almost impossible, and the aero-styled coachwork is indicative of a jet fighter, so reaching any kind of speed, the car will do as its shape is intended and take flight and promptly flip over.” It does, however, look absolutely fantastic.
Several people were injured by exploding Turboniques, most notably in setting records for the world’s fastest snowmobile at the time. In spite of these issues, folks continued to test out different interesting things to strap the rocket-engines too, including go-karts that clocked in at 260 km/h (161 mph)—although reports indicate these figures may have been exaggerated. Even this was a bit much for the Turbonique catalogue, which dubbed the rocket-propelled kart unsafe for quarter-mile competition. Not that they wouldn’t sell you one anyway.
With liability lawsuits looming, the company was finally brought down in a more ignominious way, by a successful prosecution of Middlebrooks for mail fraud. Even the complete Turbonique kits required mechanical know-how to assemble (and occasionally specialized tools), yet the advertising would have you believe it was a bolt-together affair. Insiders say that the error wasn’t deliberate, but that Middlebrooks was simply consumed with perfecting a new application of speed—and what that was we’ll never know. He was sent to prison for two years and fined $4,000, remaining in Florida after he was released to run a small resort.
It was a quiet end for a mad scientist, not the fiery explosion you expected for a man who gave space-age power to the muscle car. Even so, the Turbonique story echoes down the ages as the sort of nuttery we’ll never again see in modern times.
Sure, the Hellcat’s pretty cool, but it’s a housecat next to the Turbonique cars. Why not bolt on a drag axle and see what she’ll really do? Let’s light this candle.
Topics:
Classic cars
,
Hot rods
,
Car culture
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