Rover gas turbine engines

Rover gas turbine engines were the automotive and industrial gas turbines developed by the Rover Company at Solihull after the Second World War, led by Maurice Wilks with engineers Frank Bell and Spen King. A turbine running at 55,000 rpm and giving more than 100 horsepower was running by 1949 and could burn petrol, paraffin or diesel oil, though it used far more fuel than a piston engine. The line began with the T8 unit of the JET1 of 1950, the first gas-turbine powered car, and Rover Gas Turbines Ltd was formed as a subsidiary in 1953. It included the 1S/60 of 60 hp, the 2S/100 of the T3 coupe of 1956, with a single combustion chamber, one centrifugal compressor and a free turbine, and the 2S/150 of the Rover-BRM Le Mans car, fitted with regenerators from 1964. The smaller 2S/75 became the basis of Rotax and Lucas units and the TJ125 minijet. After the Leyland takeover of 1967 the turbines went into lorries and the Advanced Passenger Train.