Rover-BRM

The Rover-BRM was a prototype gas turbine powered racing car developed jointly in the early 1960s by the British companies Rover and British Racing Motors. Rover entered it at Le Mans after earlier road car turbines, using the chassis of Richie Ginther's crash-damaged 1962 Monaco Grand Prix BRM with a custom open-top aluminium spyder body and the turbine mounted ahead of a single speed transaxle. Its 150 bhp engine had a single centrifugal compressor, one combustion chamber and a free turbine driving the output shaft. Graham Hill drove the first tests in April 1963, and with Ginther he drove it at the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans, covering the 3,600 km target distance with hours to spare at an average of 107.8 mph, unplaced as the only car in its class. For 1964 it gained ceramic rotary regenerators and a closed coupe body designed by William Towns. It is now in the collection of the British Motor Museum.