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Ford demonstrates gas turbine truck
Page 73
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in Europe by Tony Wilding
• As already reported briefly in CM, Ford has timed the first showing of its gas turbine truck in Europe with the opening week of the Frankfurt Automobile Exhibition. On Tuesday I had a demonstration run in the vehicle, from which the true potential of the gas turbine as a future vehicle power unit was clear.
The American Ford W1000 tractive unit in which the 375 bhp turbine is installed is a perfectly standard production vehicle except for the power unit. It is one of a number of such vehicles that Ford is using in its American inter-factory transport fleet as part of the gas turbine development programme. The actual vehicle brought over from America for European demonstrations has completed about 60,000 miles of service.
The semi-trailer coupled to the W1000 was not loaded, so it was not possible to assess laden performance in comparison with a conventional vehicle. But the turbine is very quiet, and only normal driving techniques are needed. Except, of course that there is no need to disengage the transmission when stopping, and restarts in the highest ratio of the Fuller five-speed gearbox are possible The vehicle is designed to operate at 35 tons gross and at speeds up to 70 mph.
At the time of the demonstrations, Ivan Swatman, chief engineer of Ford's turbine division, revealed that the first Type 707 gas turbine had recently been delivered to a customer -for industrial use in a generator set—and that next year a gas-turbineengined bus would be in service with an American operator.
He would not forecast a production date for the gas turbine truck and said that this will only be done by Ford when durability has been proved. But he added that when the Ford turbine FS introduced in a production vehicle it will be competitive in price and fuel economy with a comparable diesel.
Mr. Swatman also revealed to me that the introduction of the 707 into Ford production will be followed some two years later by the smaller 710 (now under development) and that this will be offered in a range of outputs from 200 bhp to 335 bhp, the lowest output planned for the 707. He said that the smaller units were considered particularly suitable for the European market.
(CM readers will recall that Mr. Swatman detailed Ford turbine progress in a paper presented at last year's Commercial Motor Fleet Management Conference.)