Aero-engined car

An aero-engined car is an automobile powered by an engine designed for aircraft use. Most such cars have been built for racing, and many have attempted to set world land speed records. While the practice of fitting cars with aircraft engines predates World War I by a few years, it was most popular in the interwar period between the world wars when military-surplus aircraft engines were readily available and used to power numerous high-performance racing cars. Initially powered by piston aircraft engines, a number of post-World War II aero-engined cars have been powered by aviation turbine and jet engines instead. Piston-engined, turbine-engined, and jet-engined cars have all set world land speed records. There have also been some non-racing automotive applications for aircraft engines, including production vehicles such as the Tucker 48 and prototypes such as the Chrysler Turbine Car, Fiat Turbina, and General Motors Firebirds. In the late 20th century and into the 21st century, there has also been a revival of interest in piston-powered aero-engined racing cars.

In the early 20th century, automotive engines were fairly limited in terms of revolutions per minute (rpm), with 3,000 rpm constituting an upper limit. This meant that the easiest way to increase the power output of an engine was to increase its displacement. In the decade of the 1900s, engine construction necessitated extremely large displacements in order to simply reach the 100 horsepower (75 kW) mark. Furthermore, while it was difficult to fit such a large engine into a car, it was very much possible, and the fact that most of the aircraft engines of the period were liquid-cooled made them more adaptable for automotive use.

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