Mike Manns and the Chrysler Turbine Car
It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I’m joined by the American author Mike Manns.
Mike is a respected car restorer from Missouri whose lifelong passion for classic vehicles has led him to some truly remarkable projects.
Mike shares the story of his family's deep roots in the automotive trade, stretching back to his grandfather's involvement in the industry during the 1920s. We explore how that heritage shaped his fascination with classic cars and ultimately led him to one of the most extraordinary restoration projects imaginable, the legendary Chrysler Turbine Car.
Throughout our conversation, Mike explains the technical challenges of restoring such a rare and historically significant vehicle, while also examining the engineering innovations that made the Chrysler Turbine Car one of the most ambitious automotive experiments ever undertaken. We discuss the wider impact of pioneering technologies, the resistance often faced by revolutionary ideas, and the lessons that can still be drawn from these bold engineering ventures.
Mike also recounts some memorable encounters along the way, including his connection with Jay Leno, whose enthusiasm for automotive history has helped keep stories like these alive for modern audiences.
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Transcript
I'd like to introduce the backseat driver, a gentleman over in the state of Missouri.
Speaker A:Not a part of the world in England we hear a lot about.
Speaker A:He's an author.
Speaker A:He restores cars.
Speaker A:He restores some fantastic cars now as well because his son runs the business also.
Speaker A:He's a great friend of probably one of the world's most prestigious car collectors, the one and only Jay Leno.
Speaker A:And he's just written a book on the famous Chrysler turbine car.
Speaker A:So without further ado, I would like to introduce the one, the only, Michael Mans from deep in the heart of Missouri.
Speaker A:Michael, welcome to the backseat driver.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:Very kind.
Speaker B:Yeah, we're hiding in Missouri.
Speaker B:Missouri hides in the middle of the United States.
Speaker A:It's like I said before we went on it, we don't hear a lot about Missouri.
Speaker A:So it's just Central America, is it?
Speaker A:For want of a better term, we.
Speaker B:Are right in the middle.
Speaker B:We're on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Speaker B:Mark Twain area.
Speaker B:They may have heard of Mark Twain.
Speaker A:Oh, yes.
Speaker B:So the Missouri Mississippi river runs right past our town.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I will say the river's famous.
Speaker A:I know the river's always been very famous.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:It was the borderline of the expansion of the United States.
Speaker B:France owned it at one point, Spain owned it at one point.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, so it's.
Speaker B:It's definitely a lot of open ground still.
Speaker B:A lot of farmland.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And, and two very major big cities because they were connected to the expansion west.
Speaker B:And that was Kansas city, Missouri, and St. Louis, Missouri.
Speaker A:All right, right now to yourself, how did it all come about?
Speaker A:What came first, restoring cars or writing books or what?
Speaker B:The restoring cars, you know, came to me.
Speaker B:My family, actually.
Speaker B:My gr.
Speaker B: ted in automotive business in: Speaker B:He lived on a small farm in Missouri, and he left the farm in 24 to go to Detroit because.
Speaker B:And all the news coming out of Detroit was fabulous.
Speaker B:It was beautiful.
Speaker B:Lots of work.
Speaker B:Engineering was phenomenal.
Speaker B:There was a.
Speaker B:A race for technology all over the place.
Speaker B:It was an exciting place to go.
Speaker B: And in: Speaker B:So he took the railroad to go up there and fell in love with it and learned a lot about the trade until the depression caused him to come back to Missouri and live on the farm for a while.
Speaker B:And so after the depression settled in, he decided to open up his own car repair sales place and then evolved into his first car dealership company with the Kaiser Fraser Company.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, we didn't make it long after World War II they went out of business.
Speaker B:So yeah, my family continued on in car sales and service and so I was familiar with it all.
Speaker B:I didn't plan on making it my career but my first restoration project was my own car.
Speaker B: It was a: Speaker B:Yeah, I love dialing.
Speaker B:I bought the car fairly cheap, but it was only 11 years old when I bought it and I was in high school so I totally restored the whole thing.
Speaker B:Made it so beautiful.
Speaker B:I didn't want to drive it.
Speaker B:I was scared to drive.
Speaker B:And being in high school I knew that was going to happen.
Speaker B:So I sold it and I continued on.
Speaker B:Got married fairly young in life and realized I need to make a paycheck every week now.
Speaker B:So I decided I really enjoyed the mechanics, the engineering and I am an artist at part and I love the artwork in cars.
Speaker B:And the was right all around me at the time from all the competition out of Detroit.
Speaker B:When Harley Earl developed such a big styling firm in Detroit and all the other companies are quick to follow suit.
Speaker B:We got to have our own artist division.
Speaker B:And cars became much more than something just to get you places but it became a style when you go out with your Cadillac or your Imperial or whatever, you know the, the car.
Speaker B:Carvette.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so I loved the whole thing.
Speaker B:It satisfied my artistic urge and.
Speaker B:But then a lot of coincidences happened to me and my passion to do the very, very best I could.
Speaker B:I tried to get people that believe like that to work with me.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I did start by myself my own company and it was just to restore and, and repair cars.
Speaker B:But I, I picked up a reputation in the St. Louis area.
Speaker B:Although I don't live, you know I'm 30, 30 something miles south of St. Louis.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But there were some people up there that wanted exceptionally nice cars done.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:From my little town, I had like.
Speaker B:I don't five or seven thousand people.
Speaker B:I had a Lamborghini job.
Speaker B:I had a.
Speaker B:An early Mercedes 300.
Speaker B:It was just a list of really fine cars that came through doctors and dentists and other people were fluent enough to have special.
Speaker B:I mean grew up in and South American cars.
Speaker B:But it led me to a museum contact with them and I restored a famous car that a singer Bobby Darin in the United States.
Speaker B:So when he was at the height of his career.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:As a custom built car that in the 60s, you know how car show craze.
Speaker B:It went nuts in the United States.
Speaker B:There were car shows a couple times a year.
Speaker B:Car Events, custom cars.
Speaker B:And you had Big Daddy Roth and all the car crazy stuff.
Speaker B:I was right in the middle of all that.
Speaker B:And here came this beautiful custom car to restore the Bobby Duran dream car.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then I did a lot of other things.
Speaker B:I did.
Speaker B:I even built one of the oldest double decker wooden buses in the world.
Speaker B:You know, I bring everything out of white oak harvested right here in Missouri.
Speaker B:And just I. I love the creativity of the.
Speaker B:The craft, what I did.
Speaker B:But the odd thing that happened to me was the.
Speaker B:The new director of that museum, he got.
Speaker B:It was his first time in there.
Speaker B:So he saw this turbine car, which I didn't know what it was.
Speaker B:I had never heard of a turbine car.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:This was 95.
Speaker B:It was still all very.
Speaker B:Was a total secret of what.
Speaker B:What came out about the turbine car.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B: So in: Speaker B:He was one of the people when he was a child that his neighbor was chosen to be one of the 203 people that got to drive them for three months as a loaner car to.
Speaker B:To fill out what they thought about it, if they would buy one.
Speaker B:It was a marketing ploy by Chrysler.
Speaker B:They invented these.
Speaker B:So he knew what it was and he educated me a little bit.
Speaker B:And he said, we got to restore this.
Speaker B:And this where my book starts.
Speaker B:Because I fell into nothing but secrecy.
Speaker B:And when I contacted Chrysler, I was told it would never be public information.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, I set out to restore this and I didn't know it at the time, but it didn't even have engine parts inside it when I got the car.
Speaker B:So that's another part of the story, how we came up with internal parts.
Speaker B:It had been an engine.
Speaker B:It was going to be cut up.
Speaker B:I made for a display model.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we got cut up.
Speaker B:So it had parts in it.
Speaker B:And I was able to merge the two together.
Speaker B:And this first ever heard 35 years a turbine car run.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I did meet the president of Chrysler soon after that, Robert Glatz.
Speaker B:And I was scared to death that I had done something legally wrong because I knew he put the.
Speaker B:The lid on this very tightly.
Speaker B:They destroyed all the cars.
Speaker B:They made the cars that were on exhibit.
Speaker B:Just six of them.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Smithsonian Institute and Henry Ford Museum and all the dominant museums in or six of them had one of these cars, but they all had engines emptied out.
Speaker B:They resist a ship.
Speaker B:There were no parts in them.
Speaker B:So Robert Lutz, the president, when he saw and heard the car restored, he looked at me so puzzled.
Speaker B:He didn't ask.
Speaker B:But I read his mind, like, how did you pull this off my hand?
Speaker B:Congratulate on beautiful work I did.
Speaker B:And it still looked like.
Speaker B:I don't know how you did.
Speaker B:Yeah, but that's in my book.
Speaker B:So it's a lot of coincidences and connections.
Speaker B:And then my grandfather gave me the confidence to take this job on because I didn't know how to restore turbine car.
Speaker B:But my grandfather, no, not being funny.
Speaker A:I don't think anybody would know how to restore.
Speaker A:Maybe the body work, yes.
Speaker A:But the engine, this was the first.
Speaker B:One in the world to be restored.
Speaker A:Yeah,.
Speaker B:I knew that.
Speaker B:I knew that it was secret.
Speaker B:I knew I had a piece of history that was so odd that it fell in my lap.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I was going to get it.
Speaker B:My grandfather taught me how to restore engines session.
Speaker B:He said that when he was.
Speaker B:He called me about ready to break a bolt.
Speaker B:One time he saw me get ready, really pull hard on a wrench.
Speaker B:He almost slammed me.
Speaker B:He said, boy, you're going to break that.
Speaker B:Don't do that.
Speaker B:He said, when you.
Speaker B:When I grew up, you didn't have a parts store down the road.
Speaker B:Yeah, if you broke something, you're going to have a lot of trouble.
Speaker B:He said you didn't have a chilt manual to tell you how to put it together, so you had to take things apart and understand it as you did.
Speaker B:And he said you looked at everything.
Speaker B:Bolt length, shoulder length, the gasket thickness.
Speaker B:He said that you understand why it's attached the way it is.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Nowadays we call that reverse engineering.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:He didn't have a name for it, but he just told me that's how you do.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I just.
Speaker B:I'll take this jet engine apart and figure it out.
Speaker B:I was like,.
Speaker A:Just out of interest, is the jet engine out of something else?
Speaker A:Is it out of an aircraft or was it unique to the car?
Speaker B:This was something that Chrysler did.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:They first.
Speaker B:They were involved with the race against the Nazis.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Developed jet engine during World War I.
Speaker B:That's how this staff of engineers got involved with it.
Speaker B:And in my book, I have them coming to England because Frank Whittle, he was the leader of the whole technology.
Speaker B:He was one of the first ones in England in Royal Air Force to think that they could conceivably build a jet engine.
Speaker B:But he couldn't get financial backing from the military or government because they thought it was outrageous.
Speaker B:The only thing that could stand that much heat was Firebird.
Speaker B:And you sure couldn't fly a plane with Firebird in it.
Speaker B:So it is impossible.
Speaker B:So he was kind of stymied because he, he did invent the Glossner.
Speaker B:Glossner Pioneer and the Glassner Meteor.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Which were two of the very first jet plane concepts that he.
Speaker B:So I put my characters out of Detroit going over there to study.
Speaker B:Before World War II happened.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:How he was the Vulcan Chet technology because they were racing to do it too.
Speaker B:But after World War II, you know, the American manufacturers, they want to get back to building cars.
Speaker B:There have been no new cars for four years and the market was heavy.
Speaker B:You know, they as fast they could build them, they'd sell them.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So they were to not really pursue the jet engines because there's more money in cars.
Speaker B:At the time there wasn't, you know, air airplane business like that yet.
Speaker B:So my team, I know that the engineer that I studied.
Speaker B:And another freakish coincidence that happened to me while I was searching for information.
Speaker B:This was before the Internet.
Speaker B:So I, I found that George Shootmere, he was the head of engineering of Chrysler when he retired.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He took away a lot of his research in his personal work and Chrysler let him do it.
Speaker B:They just, you know, he was at engineer.
Speaker B:He took home what he wanted to take home.
Speaker B:Yeah, that stuff disappeared.
Speaker B:Nobody heard from him.
Speaker B:So I finally found where he had lived and died.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I found that he was a alumni from University of Michigan.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And then I found a historical archive, private archives up there called the Bentley Historic Archives.
Speaker B:And when I asked for his name, I actually saw his name was listed on their archive list of collections they had.
Speaker B:They said they'd had his work in there for.
Speaker B:I don't know if it's 34 years.
Speaker B:Nobody ever asked for it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it took to get it.
Speaker B:When I got it, it was put together chronologically from earliest dates from when he.
Speaker B: He graduated College in, in: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he would do tracer and he's there his whole Life.
Speaker B: So from: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:The Hemi engine of course for the Air Force and they put it cars.
Speaker B:Eventually the Hemi was his engineering and the team he ran.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But he was so upset when he left Chrysler, the fact that they wouldn't build his jet turbine engine, that he pulled all that stuff away and hid it in that archive waiting for someone like the ME to pull that up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he had me right up to the day that he retired.
Speaker B:And last things that was in his archive was article after article after article about pollution, about oil spills in the ocean on the land.
Speaker B: had one of his speeches from: Speaker B:He predicted 20 years in the future.
Speaker B:1974.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, I remember 74 here in Los Angeles having this weird phenomenon they called smog.
Speaker B:Yes, it's fog, Smoke.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's smog.
Speaker B:And so he was really on the money.
Speaker B:And he did it through mathematical calculations of how much carbon was coming out of a six cylinder single engine with Chrysler.
Speaker B:And then he just started multiplying that, saying this is going to be a lot of carbon.
Speaker B:Because they were predicting back then that every family will own two cars.
Speaker B:Yeah, like that.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:But he knew his turbine had the ability to utilize almost all the fuel.
Speaker B:So there was no unspent carbon would come out into the air.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it reduced amount of carbon.
Speaker B:And that's what he was focused on.
Speaker B:He said what they learned already, he knows, he compared it to the piston and he said, here we are from 19.
Speaker B:Well, they developed in 10 years.
Speaker B:They had a drivable turbine car.
Speaker B:He said, it's only 10 years old.
Speaker B:He said when the custom engine was only 10 years old, it wasn't that dependable.
Speaker B:And look what happened in 60 years.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So he said, you take every engine.
Speaker B:What will this turbine engine be like in 60 years?
Speaker B:If you have an army of engineers working on year after year, they make it better and better because he said, the dynamics of the principles of engineering as it consumes the fuel, they were regenerating the heat.
Speaker B:This was the key.
Speaker B:He did.
Speaker B:Instead of just blowing that heat out the exhaust like an airplane does, to push it forward.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:They forced through a metal mesh that heated up.
Speaker B:And that was also.
Speaker B:That metal mesh was rotating into the incoming air.
Speaker B: to the engine is preheated to: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Before.
Speaker B:Before it got to the fuel.
Speaker B:So it was already, you know, increased amount of combustion.
Speaker B:So he figured that the more they learned how to transfer that exhaust heat back into the engine, the more cleaner they're going to burn that fuel.
Speaker B:Yeah, totally burn out.
Speaker B:So he thought that it would eventually take over everything.
Speaker B:There were several people in the industries that were on his side.
Speaker B:Eventually the piston engines are going to be a thing of history.
Speaker B:Like a steam engines were.
Speaker B:There we will have very small turbine engines that will run a million miles and generate electricity and not turn a shaft.
Speaker B:Yeah, they'll turn a shaft to a charging mechanism, but not to a transmission like the Chrysler didn't want to build an electric car with a turbine engine.
Speaker B:He said no, let's not make it that weird.
Speaker B:People buy it just it was cancelled.
Speaker B:Just an engineer turbine engine.
Speaker B:So he didn't even like doing that.
Speaker B: Yeah, this is: Speaker B:Drawings show it generating electricity.
Speaker B:Then he said battery technology he said is in its most primitive right now.
Speaker B:We got lead, acid.
Speaker B:He said that will change too in the future.
Speaker B:Didn't know how but he knew he could see the future.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Said that basically this is the Million Mile Car.
Speaker B: You know he said that: Speaker B:The petroleum industry.
Speaker B:The turbine doesn't burn gasoline, especially in those days.
Speaker B:There was lead in the gas and they would build up deposits on the turbine blades.
Speaker B:But the urbans earned best on like jet fuel or kerosene, that type of a low grade petroleum.
Speaker B:So it didn't need the refineries which the petroleum companies had invested in so many refineries they felt like they needed to run gas and all the grown to pay off the refineries.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Like if you bring up a turbine car or refinery is going to be sitting there doing nothing.
Speaker B:So another odd thing that I uncovered and I got this out of Chrysler's archives.
Speaker B:Chrysler eventually let me into their archives.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Nobody else let in but since I wrote this book I sent it to their head archivist and he told me that he said you know more than I know about this because pressure didn't care about the turbine car.
Speaker B:Once it was over and done with they went on to making cars.
Speaker B:You know, they didn't care about building archives about what they tried to do.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:I said George Shooter had a vision that he thought it could be done and that was it was stepped away from because if it didn't have an oil pan, it didn't have antifreeze, it didn't need maintenance.
Speaker B:In fact there were predictions that it would be just made sealed from the factory, not needing service for hundreds of thousands of miles.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There was a comment by one of the engineers like so we're going to put an engine that will go a million miles into a car that would barely hold together for 150,000 miles.
Speaker B:And so they.
Speaker B:That's another principle.
Speaker B:It had to come into Chrysler like wait, we're trying to sell a car every one, two or three years.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You give them carbon last 10 years, what will happen to our.
Speaker B:And it doesn't need service.
Speaker B:Our whole network of dealerships.
Speaker B:What are they going to do?
Speaker B:Just break jobs?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Make a living doing that.
Speaker B:So there had to be a lot of people.
Speaker B:In fact, there was enough people against this.
Speaker B:In my book, I had in the back of it, I put 80 pages of real documents that I. I studied thousands of documents.
Speaker B:But these are the ones I selected to put in here.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And they.
Speaker B:I lost my train of thought when I started thinking about why I put that in there.
Speaker B:I want people to know that my book is actually historical fiction.
Speaker B:I invented character.
Speaker B:That got me thinking about why I wrote it that way.
Speaker B:Because I'm dead with 2,000 documents.
Speaker B:It bored me to that table.
Speaker B:Power curves and charge ratios and just on and on and on.
Speaker B:I thought, I can't write it that way.
Speaker B: ke, what was it like to be in: Speaker B:I mean, we grew up in a time when there was slang that we all knew when we were young, we used it.
Speaker B: , what slang did they have in: Speaker B:They had to have their own stuff that they did.
Speaker B:So I wanted to take the reader back in time and like, what was it like to come out of depression and just get a great job and then you're tossed right into World War II.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And the world is in turmoil big time.
Speaker B:You guys, more than us even.
Speaker B:I mean, we were there to help it.
Speaker B:So I did bring my characters over to England just before England had to declare war.
Speaker B:So used the.
Speaker B:The ocean liners.
Speaker B:My characters were on that.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:When the war hit, I had an engineer from Frank Whipple team.
Speaker B:I made this up.
Speaker B:But I had him come back with my engineer so he could see how they were doing things different in Detroit, what they were thinking about jet technology.
Speaker B:Just so I could expose the fact that English people got caught mid track wherever they were at.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:When the.
Speaker B:When the Athena got sunk.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Passenger.
Speaker B:There were 28Americans on it too.
Speaker B:But they all died with a U boat.
Speaker B:Sunk it.
Speaker B:And that's when war was declared.
Speaker B:So wherever you were at in the world, if you were English, you were stuck there.
Speaker B:You're not getting back.
Speaker B:All the ships were commandeered for the war effort.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I have Levon Braidworth that I invented a character that lived over there around Covington and.
Speaker B:And I had that way I could talk a little bit about what American and England both experienced in the race against Nazis for technology.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because that's at the heart of the whole story.
Speaker B:And once they finally broke through and conquered the.
Speaker B:All the problems about jet technology.
Speaker B:Then it opened these engineers minds to wait.
Speaker B:We could do all kinds of things.
Speaker B:We don't need piston engines any or we can trains and buses and barges and ships and everything off of turbines.
Speaker B:So maybe they were a little bit more too positive in their mind.
Speaker B:But in the long run I found that's what I was going to say.
Speaker B:I put in a copy of the United States Senate judicial hearing that was brought on against Chrysler and George Hoopmere and charges of antitrust and monopoly for inventing turbine engineering.
Speaker B:And I thought these senators they're just like the ones we have now.
Speaker B:They don't know technology.
Speaker B:They don't know what a true it was probably be.
Speaker B:But somebody with money paid them to go in and stop Chrysler from doing this and put them into a anti thing.
Speaker B:You can't pull this off.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that just shows the amount of force that was against.
Speaker B:That's what I was going to finish my story with.
Speaker B:The forces that were against this technology were not like evil but they wanted to keep their own.
Speaker B:Well what in the United States judicial appearing they said that they estimate one in every seventh person in the United States would lose their job.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:With this turbine because there were millions of copper radiators made every year.
Speaker B:There were millions of spark plugs, electric wires or rubber hose.
Speaker B:You had the gates rubber companies and all the other industries.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:They would go out in business as fast as a Kodak film business went out.
Speaker B:When the.
Speaker B:When our cell phones.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:When digital technology took over.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Kodak was out of business and instantly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so that all these other other industries would have been affected like that.
Speaker B:So there had to be a thinking that it's changing everything too fast and it would be unhealthy to do it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so the technology got brushed away and without engineers cushioner to and the money from the corporations to pay their salaries then it goes nowhere.
Speaker B:You know just dead water.
Speaker B:So I think what I did, what I've studied it was plausible.
Speaker B:It was definitely the ingredients for success was there if they'd have stayed on it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There wasn't the will from the money side of it the political side of it to do.
Speaker B:But in that time air pollution was not even considered a big thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Not at all.
Speaker B:So and maybe, maybe one day in the early days I sent a letter to Elon Musk.
Speaker B:I didn't know he was so famous for rich.
Speaker B:I hears a guy saying he's going to invent electric cars.
Speaker B:Well I knew I restored Electric cars.
Speaker A: From: Speaker B:And so, you know, I thought about, well, he ought to know about this turbine, this little turbine, you know, if it was developed like it would be.
Speaker B:I think that they were picturing an engine of beside about the size of microwave oven.
Speaker B:A small device.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I would spend and use the tarp off that to generate electric.
Speaker B:And they were going to use generator to have the turbine power it and, and be done with all your driveline, you'd have a very simple car.
Speaker B:I think artists would have liked styling abilities.
Speaker B:You know, it's like artists were always trapped at what can they do.
Speaker B:The engine's got to be here, the wheels got, you know, the drive axles and they're always stuck with it.
Speaker B:So I think it.
Speaker B:And what, what my engineer that I wrote about, he said with every new invention, some other business is threatened by it.
Speaker B:He said when the car came out, the horse industry was devastated.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because there was every town have a delivery state where every town had horse traders and, and, and the people made it.
Speaker B:All the saddles and all the gear and the carts and everything.
Speaker B:Yeah, all those people like Stu Baker, they, they made wooden carts to be pulled by animals.
Speaker B:But when they saw the car come out, they're like, well, we'll make our wooden body but we're gonna put an engine in it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that's how terrible.
Speaker B:Instead of dying on the vine, they evolved.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that's what George.
Speaker B:His principle was like engineers bring the future and then you know, we'll get it figured out and an industry will change to go with it.
Speaker B:But the turbine just disappeared and it may stay that way, I don't know.
Speaker A:Now the one thing is, you were saying that I mentioned him in the introduction and I mean the man is incredibly famous and his passion for cars and he's the is or was the host of a late night American TV show.
Speaker A:Jay Leno actually owns one of these cars, doesn't he?
Speaker B:I have to say is a wonderful person.
Speaker B:If any good thought you have about the.
Speaker B:I can say it's even more when you meet him in person, he's so down to earth and he's so grateful and helpful to the people that worked with him on his show.
Speaker B:He kept them on his salary and just he, he had a, you know, he, he's unique as a person, very warm hearted and.
Speaker B:But actually when I first met him, it was called the Turban.
Speaker B:And when he heard that I restored it, they contacted the museum, owned it and wanted to buy it.
Speaker B:And they said they couldn't sell things, that it was public thing, so it wasn't going to be for sale.
Speaker B:And so they told me they were excited.
Speaker B:They say, hey, JLL just called, check on the car.
Speaker B:You did?
Speaker B:But I said, well, do you, sir?
Speaker B:You have his phone number?
Speaker B:And they're like, well, I don't know if we'd be allowed to give that out, but.
Speaker B:Because I wanted to contact Jake, so, you know, I knew his collection was starting back then.
Speaker B:He was.
Speaker B:I did not.
Speaker B: But I did get to see him in: Speaker B:I think he had 23 cars.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It was in one garage, but it was a large.
Speaker B:It was a hangar out there on Burbank Airport.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But the museum gave me a mailing address for NBC Studios.
Speaker B:And I thought, right, Jay's so famous right now, he probably gets a truckload of fan mail every day.
Speaker B:So I didn't do it, but I thought, I'm gonna give him a resume of what I've done and cars I've done, and some story about the turbine car I did.
Speaker B:Well, he immediately called me, you know, a week or so after I'd mailed it, I get a phone call from him so quick, I thought it was a prank.
Speaker B:I thought it was something.
Speaker B:You never come out here.
Speaker B:I want you to come here.
Speaker B:I'm going to give you tickets to the show.
Speaker B:I'm going to put you right next to Mavis, and you're going to sit up front.
Speaker B:And that night at the show, when I did go out there, actually had me come up on stage.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I didn't know if the show looked like the show was still going on.
Speaker B:He said, I wanted to introduce somebody from Crowning.
Speaker B: I called me out there in: Speaker B:It wasn't.
Speaker B:I don't think it was taped at the time, but they were still all there, cameras and everything.
Speaker B:So took a picture, got that picture in my shop, and we went to his place afterwards.
Speaker B:Because the show, the Tonight show, was filmed like four or five o' clock in the afternoon.
Speaker B:So, you know, it wasn't really late.
Speaker B:So we got up to his garage and stayed there till dark.
Speaker B:He's staying there.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I was the one had to say, well, Jay, I gotta let you have some rest.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker B:Heard his stories and got to know him.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I told him at the time, I said, jay, of all the things I found out, I said, this is purely a rumor.
Speaker B: at the New York World's Fair: Speaker B:And he couldn't.
Speaker B:He just wanted one of all the cars he could have.
Speaker B:That'd be the car.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I said, heard a rumor from some of the engineers that did help me.
Speaker B:And some of you know, the factory wouldn't help me, but behind the factory doors, the engineers, some of them gave me assistance and helped me a lot.
Speaker B:And I also heard the rumor that Chrysler did not destroy every single one of those cars, which they said they did.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And they said there were two cars that ran that were secretly hidden in the R D department of the turbine.
Speaker B:The lab.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I told.
Speaker B:He popped up, I'm gonna buy one.
Speaker B:I know Robert Lott's really good.
Speaker B:I got the first Viper experimental one right there.
Speaker B:You know, I got that lots.
Speaker B:I said, jay, I don't know if it's real.
Speaker B:I said, it's not heard.
Speaker B:It's just like you hear rumors all the time.
Speaker B:He said, well, I'll find out anyway.
Speaker B:Fourteen years later, I've been seeing I ever since then.
Speaker B:I never stopped going out there because every time I go to pebble beach for the car show, I was on my treat to go down there and visit M2 to make the.
Speaker B:The lab in California.
Speaker B:Long ways from Missouri.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I always enjoyed that.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And he never got his turbine car.
Speaker B:He's.
Speaker B:I know he was always trying.
Speaker B:I know he tried when Mercedes Benz bought Chrysler.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't know if you remember, Mercedes bought them.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And they have nowhere with it.
Speaker B:And this was the funny part of the car.
Speaker B:He called me 14 years later.
Speaker B:He said, you got to come out here.
Speaker B:You won't believe this.
Speaker B:I said, well.
Speaker B:He said, well, you know.
Speaker B:And I heard Fiat's getting ready to buy Chrysler.
Speaker B:He said, I thought I'd just give it one more shot.
Speaker B:And he said, I just simply told those guys, those Italians aren't going to give a crap about your turbine car.
Speaker B:They said, okay.
Speaker B:And so he did not tell me how much he paid for it.
Speaker B:But I went out there and that was a really fun time.
Speaker B:J.
Speaker B:Little cooked dinner that night.
Speaker B:He personally cooked turked up place like you gotta swear my potatoes on the.
Speaker B:It's special stuff.
Speaker B:So I had a great time visiting.
Speaker B:We took his car out, his turbine car out on the five and out around Burbanking up on the interstate.
Speaker B:We was driving it around and I think guys, chief, he's mob being where he goes.
Speaker B:I told him, I said, we parked at the stoplight, the People in the car next to us are going crazy after him.
Speaker B:And I said, you can't go anywhere.
Speaker B:People know.
Speaker B:He said, I know.
Speaker B:He said, but it's good.
Speaker B:He likes it.
Speaker B:So we were driving and he's.
Speaker B:I told him.
Speaker B:He said, you know, if he hadn't told me this rumor, I would have never had this car.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I said, and now you're the only person in the world to buy a car from Chrysler, a Turi.
Speaker B:You're the only one in the world.
Speaker B:And I had my book with me, and I got Pat it on dash.
Speaker B:And I said, I think this book will make your car the most valuable car in the world, the most valuable turbo in the world.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I could see him.
Speaker B:He wouldn't.
Speaker B:Took his eyes off the road.
Speaker B:I saw a little smile come to his face, thinking like, yeah, you might have something.
Speaker B:I said, well, what other cars got this much secrecy?
Speaker B:This technology, which would have changed everything, would affect the petroleum companies and the whole way we buy and use cars, how much?
Speaker B:This is what my head engineer wrote about.
Speaker B:He said his whole game was to make things better for people.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:He said, so less of your paycheck has to go to supporting a car.
Speaker B:It's a good thing.
Speaker B:That's not exactly the way his company saw it.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Event alignment.
Speaker B:Well, that never burns out.
Speaker B:Where's the future in that?
Speaker B:So, you know, it's.
Speaker B:But Jay is.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He said I've always been in contact with him.
Speaker B:He did.
Speaker B:He wrote that forward for me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And he's done a couple book signings with me at some very prestigious shows, car shows, and wish me the best on it.
Speaker B:Right now, my book sets on Amazon for sale.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I have marketed that much yet because I.
Speaker B:You know, it's all fairly new to me being an author.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But I am on my third book already.
Speaker B:I got a second book.
Speaker B:One was on.
Speaker B:And I told Jay, when I gave him his book, I wrote to him.
Speaker B:I said, you know, I was a mechanic my whole life, a body man and businessman.
Speaker B:And I. I didn't really read books.
Speaker B:It wasn't my habit.
Speaker B:But I said, I.
Speaker B:It did something to me to develop this book, write it, that I just loved.
Speaker B:I said I could not.
Speaker B:I couldn't stop doing it.
Speaker B:My wife told me, like, you've been up since dark, and it's dark again.
Speaker B:You're still.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I can't turn it off when I sleep.
Speaker B:I'm thinking of it.
Speaker B:So that's what happened to me.
Speaker B:And I wrote him that.
Speaker B:I said, you you wrote brought another change to my life that would have never seen coming.
Speaker B:Because if it hadn't been for him pushing me to write this book, I probably wouldn't have done it.
Speaker B:Yeah, I didn't have any practical experience at doing it, but I had good help.
Speaker B:I got good help.
Speaker B:I got editors and people taught me about and they said I had a natural ability to write.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But things I didn't know.
Speaker B:So I got help to make it clean and nice.
Speaker B:You know, I got professionals to help me on it.
Speaker B:But the light is still on about writing.
Speaker B:I love doing it and I started, I. I have emotions in my book.
Speaker B:Anything in life's courses goes through all kinds of emotions.
Speaker B:So I start with young people that at the end of their career, their retirement age.
Speaker B:So my book covers three decades.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that's another reason I had to put it in fiction.
Speaker B: really said to each other in: Speaker A:Recorded now besides writing books.
Speaker A:I mean, it's like I said, you gave me a walk around your workshops though your son now runs it.
Speaker A:I mean every morning if you're not writing, you can go and look at some absolutely fantastic cars, can't you?
Speaker B: e since he started with me in: Speaker B:And when we got older I'd stop by his house and pick it.
Speaker B:Well, we played music together too.
Speaker B:He's a drummer and I was a bass man.
Speaker B:So 15 years we had a band for filming in our own time.
Speaker B:And so I'd pick him up every morning and his wife would be there and he said, all right honey, I'll see you later, I gotta go work on cool cars.
Speaker A:I mean it's like I said, you have a Ferrari Tour de France in there.
Speaker A:And I mean that to my mind, if you said come over to Missouri, you can take one of them out.
Speaker A:I tell you now it would be that because having taken part in the recreation of the event and seen films on the original and read books on it, that would be even if it was only say five miles down the road, that to me would be absolutely incredible.
Speaker A:Are you ever overcome with the urge to take any of them out when they're finished before the owner comes back for them?
Speaker B:Well, we do.
Speaker B:Most times we take them out because we have to make sure they are actually driving and don't have a problem.
Speaker B:Because some of the major shows you go to like Elvis beach, if you want to be able to qualify for their top awards.
Speaker B:Yeah, you have to do the 50 mile tour.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And driving cars and you'll go up and down hills and there have been some disasters on those roads when people take something that old out.
Speaker B:I've seen wooden spokes come apart or brakes come apart.
Speaker B:It just.
Speaker B:Some things can happen.
Speaker B:So especially with a sports car, I wouldn't say we push it to the limit to hurt anything, but we've got to make sure everything, everything works good on.
Speaker B:So we do do that and it's a distracting as far as being worried about traffic around you that maybe is careless or not noticing.
Speaker B:So we try to do it.
Speaker B:Luckily for us, we live in a beautiful country area.
Speaker B:We find roads where there aren't cars.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And nice.
Speaker B:And that's, that's a nice curvy.
Speaker B:We live in a hilly Ozark mountain area.
Speaker B:So a lot of really good roads for experiencing a car.
Speaker B:Especially the British cars.
Speaker B:They love those kind of roads.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So which of all the cars you've restored or which are in the workshops, which is your favorite?
Speaker A:Which would you like to own or do you own it?
Speaker B:I have to say now I don't own it.
Speaker B:But my dream when I was a kid and I, I saw a Harris collection out in Reno and I saw a Duesenberg that, you know, I thought it was a German car.
Speaker B:I didn't even know it was an American car when I saw it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But Duesenberg built in America, I just, I marveled at their, their size, their engineering.
Speaker B:They were first cars that they pretty much guarantee it'll do 100 miles an hour.
Speaker B:That's when there wasn't any place to do do that.
Speaker B:But the, the styling was, was an era, especially in the early 30s I thought was so glorious and beautiful.
Speaker B:But you know, that was I guess my all time car.
Speaker B:I know that when we first got to do a December, I did it for the little beach show.
Speaker B:I just felt like I reached my mark.
Speaker B:Now I gave a Dusenberg in the shop.
Speaker B:But my son now he is constantly on, on the east coast, west coast, he has a tractor trailer.
Speaker B:He has a, like a built in motor home on the back of the tractor trailer and has a double stacker trailer.
Speaker B:He pulls cars in.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So we have concierge service for the collectors so they don't have to hire a generic car hauler because we've seen cars get damaged on those sometimes and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I wonder, as I said, maybe the driver of that truck used to haul cabbage.
Speaker A:Just putting in a friend of mine on a beautiful vintage Bentley that He took out to Australia on an event and on the way back the car was so badly damaged in transportation he actually sold it and they to completely straighten the chassis and everything else.
Speaker A:He was so upset he sold it.
Speaker A:He just couldn't bear to look at it anymore.
Speaker A:So yeah, looking at transporting these cars is in many ways an art form.
Speaker A:They have to be done correctly.
Speaker B:Jason at my son, he, he's been asked to drive all the way out to California.
Speaker B:I mean that's a three day drive to get out there and just with an empty trailer and take a car from the owner's house up 5 hour drive up to pebble beach and back so that you don't have to encounter someone that doesn't appreciate what it is.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, it's a multi million dollar car you're putting in there so that you gotta check everything over and over and over.
Speaker B:Hyper.
Speaker A:I mean you, you attend these shows.
Speaker A:I mean what are, I mean these shows are globally renowned.
Speaker A:I mean what are they like when you're at them.
Speaker B:For a restorer?
Speaker B:For one.
Speaker B:You're very proud to have your car and you're watching to see how people react to it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Then there's another.
Speaker B:It's like a beauty contest.
Speaker B:You get called up on stage and there's three of you stand there.
Speaker B:You don't know who's going to be the first or third but they know, you know they're going to call a third place winner first.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Don't want to be called up first was anxiety because you feel this responsibility to the owner too.
Speaker B:I mean he's interested you to.
Speaker B:But I did, I did know that through all the car shows I've been through that judging fluctuates greatly.
Speaker B:This theme of the show has an effect and you never know what you're going to be sitting beside somebody in my red car that's so over the top.
Speaker B:Fantastic history and everything.
Speaker B:No matter how good your car was, you're not going to beat it.
Speaker B:So you had to just deal with a loss.
Speaker B:It's a lot like a sports game.
Speaker B:You're going to win or lose.
Speaker A:I mean the other thing is a car that wins at pebble beach suddenly gets a zero added to its value, doesn't it?
Speaker A:I mean it can have a dramatic effect on the car.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Definitely is.
Speaker B:It's a, it's a credential like because everybody would like to have the car that contain a Pebble Beach.
Speaker B:Once you've been there, it cannot be shown there again for another 10 years.
Speaker B:So you can't go show.
Speaker B:But I have cars that we did for the same owners that have taken back a second time after 10 years of nobody's seen their car again.
Speaker B:And they keep their cars that long.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:If they live in they'll still have a collection that has that.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But show.
Speaker B:There's a network of people you see over and over and you get to know them and it's a lot of social fun.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Together to talk.
Speaker B:Or afterwards if it's being invited to have dinner with certain people and sit talk.
Speaker B:It's a camaraderie of the whole event because it's.
Speaker B:Even the owners go through the stress, the worry.
Speaker B:You gotta get everything together.
Speaker B:And when you get on the field and I don't care who you are.
Speaker B:When you're the owner and the judges come up and they ask you to step away.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So they inspect your car.
Speaker B:Then they call you back.
Speaker B:They say now get in and start it.
Speaker B:Go through the blinkers.
Speaker B:It's like having a traffic cop telling you to do everything.
Speaker B:People get so nervous.
Speaker B:I know they don't know what all the gauges and all that do, but they get tongue tied and they get on when you put on the spot.
Speaker B:So you know, owners get nervous too going through the whole thing and doesn't matter how rich they are or famous they are.
Speaker B:And once while you have a great time to have some fun times.
Speaker B:I guess good film with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker B:Having fun with him.
Speaker B:Before he became the governor he was just like movie star and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we had taken a.
Speaker B:And I signed up for Cheney out to have a. I believe it was a 28.
Speaker B:Beautiful, beautiful car.
Speaker B:He really marveled at it.
Speaker B:So anyway, that start our association and we did another car where Clint Eastwood was friends with the owner and came up to it, got pictures with us so that, you know, it was fairly recent.
Speaker B:Clint's fairly old now.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But in that town, you know I've met even Sterling Moss.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I didn't know him from the man Louis Jody.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker B:Coming out the shows now than he did racing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's a really pleasurable way to make a living.
Speaker B:And by his full stress and aggravation.
Speaker B:And I can tell you when you're restoring, you really feel like you're hung out there all by yourself.
Speaker B:There's nobody can answer some of the questions you got and the problems you got to solve.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And customers sometimes don't realize how difficult these problems are.
Speaker B:Especially if you're missing a part.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:New technology has helped a lot.
Speaker B:I know Jay Lenold showed me what, what a part they made with, you know, machine that makes it off of a computer.
Speaker B:Just.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:With the welding until it made a whole part, some of this stuff.
Speaker B:But it's going to be expensive and we've been through it.
Speaker B:When somebody's got a part that they know you need.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:Mood wow.
Speaker B:The price can get phenomenal.
Speaker B:So it's a shock sometimes when people get the bills for what it takes to do it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But that's what makes collector cars valuable.
Speaker B:And somebody's been through all that.
Speaker B:You know, you've.
Speaker B:You've brought something back to life that wouldn't be unless somebody really stuck their neck out.
Speaker A:So what, what's next for Michael Mans?
Speaker B:I'm enjoying the retirement, but book writing is something I can physically do a lot better than running around the shop now because I'll be 75 here in, in another month.
Speaker B:So I think, you know, looking at the rest of my time, five more years, I'll be 80.
Speaker B:So I think writing is a good exercise.
Speaker A:Michael Mann, all the best.
Speaker A:It's been a pleasure chatting with you and thank you very much indeed, sir, for joining me on the backseat driver.
Speaker B:I, I love talking to you previously when we've talked.
Speaker B:You're quite enjoyable.
Speaker B:I enjoy it.
Speaker A:Once again, Battle Mans.
Speaker A:Thank you very much indeed, sir.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Jordan.
