Word: firebirds
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...General Motors has a turbine car, the Firebird (TIME, Jan. 19), but its engine is not ready for installation in current auto bodies...
Most of the experimental cars of tomorrow (see NEWS IN PICTURES, pp. 100-1) are made of Fiberglas. There are two from each of the five G.M. divisions, plus the Firebird, a gas turbine car (TIME, Jan. 18). G.M.'s experimental jobs may never see the inside of a family garage, but many of the design ideas will find their way into future G.M. products, just as the wrap-around windshields, cut-down doors, low, sweeping bodies of 1954's models were all features originally worked out on earlier experimental cars...
General Motors this week rolled out the most Buck Rogersish automobile ever to come out of Detroit, its experimental XP-21 Firebird (see cut). The plastic-bodied Firebird closely resembles Douglas' supersonic F4D Skyray, with its sweptback delta wings (for stability), its vertical tail fin, and plastic bubble enclosing the driver's seat. Behind the driver's seat, the Firebird has a gas turbine engine, the first in a U.S. car. The small, kerosene-burning engine drives a turbine that transmits power directly to the wheels...
...full throttle, the Firebird can do 150 m.p.h. on a straight track. But motorists will probably never see it on a highway. Even though the hot gases blasted out of the Firebird's huge tail go through a cooling unit first, they are still hot enough to burn clothing or flesh several feet away. Explained G.M. President Harlow Curtice: "This is not a car of tomorrow, but a laboratory on wheels . . . We are not trying to develop overwhelming horsepower or tremendous speeds, but are trying to determine whether the turbine can be harnessed to give efficient and economical performance...
...Firebird. In Cleveland, just after Mr. and Mrs. Alfonso Capretta had finished remodeling their home, a bird picked up a lighted cigarette from the street, flew to its nest in their roof, and set a $2,500 fire...