1968
SHELBY TURBINE Indy Car
1968
SHELBY TURBINE Indy Car
This 1968 Shelby-Wallis Turbine Indy Car will be offered at The Daytime Auction - Monterey, August 14-16, 2014
For more information visit
Mecum.com // 262-275-5050
California License #81410
By Stephen Cox // Edited by Mike Carr // Photos by David Newhardt
Additional research and contributions to this story provided by the following:
Donald Devine
Memoirs of Dick Ralstin
David Norton
TrackForum.com
Bruce Linsmeyer
The Spartansburg Herald
National Speed Sport News archives
Phil McCray
Ray Heppenstall
Mike Carr
Bruce McLaren wearing his Goodyear Racing suit.
PART I: THE IDEA
The plan was straightforward. Ken Wallis, a 38-yearold British aircraft engineer, had designed the famed Granatelli-Lotus STP Turbine with which Parnelli Jones had nearly won the Indianapolis 500 in 1967. Jones had dominated the field and was cruising to victory when a transmission bearing failed only three laps from the checkered flag. So dominating was the car’s performance, that turbine fever spread among team owners, with Wallis’ name at the top of everyone’s list.
Wallis knew the time was right to leave Granatelli’s team and form his own company, build his own cars, and then return to Indianapolis to win the world’s most famous auto race.
The original plan was to build three race cars, each powered by a $75,000 turbine engine secured from General Electric and driven by a brilliantly conceived hydraulic all-wheel-drive system. The cars would be fabricated by Wallis’ engineering staff at his rented two-story shop in Torrance, California, throughout the autumn of 1967. They would then be tested at west coast race tracks before shipping to Indianapolis in midMarch 1968 for further trials, followed by the 500-mile race in late May.
“They are the nearest to certain winners ever built in the history of the race.”
-Carroll Shelby
Wallis went shopping for money and drivers. He formed a relationship with automotive legend Carroll Shelby, whose impressive list of motorsports accomplishments did not yet include a victory at Indy. Wallis also introduced his idea to Goodyear Tire and Rubber company. Convinced that the project could succeed, Goodyear was quick to supply generous funding as well as direct assistance from the manager of their racing division, Larry Truesdale, and their public relations director, Dick Ralstin.
Goodyear provided reigning Formula 1 champion Denis Hulme and defending Can-Am champion Bruce McLaren to drive the new Shelby-Wallis turbine Indy Cars. Shelby chief engineer Phil Remington was brought on board and the staff was complete.
On paper the team appeared unbeatable. It was the talk of the industry. The Shelby-Wallis cars were featured in Motor Trend magazine. Hot Rod magazine carried a four-page story on the turbines. Road & Track and Sports Car International printed features as well. So confident was Shelby that he told a reporter, “They are the nearest to certain winners ever built in the history of the race.”
That is, until the sanctioning body of the Indianapolis 500 changed the rules.
Turbine engines rely on air intake to create power. A wider air intake (called an “annulus,” where the first in a series of rotating blades pulls air into the engine) permits enormous horsepower, while limiting the annulus has the opposite effect. After the wild success of Granatelli’s STP turbine in 1967, the United States Auto Club (USAC) was faced with a difficult decision. The sanctioning body could continue to allow turbine machines to dominate the race and eventually render traditional piston-powered cars obsolete, or they could try to level the playing field by limiting the power of the fast-evolving turbines. They chose the latter.
In doing so, USAC violated a long-standing policy that prohibited year-to-year rule changes and guaranteed that newly-built machines could compete for at least two years between regulatory adjustments. A legal challenge was mounted against the new regulations, but it ultimately failed.
Goodyear provided reigning Formula 1 champion Denis Hulme and defending Can-Am champion Bruce McLaren to drive the new Shelby-Wallis turbine Indy Cars.
“If they bring the cars to the speedway the way they say they will, there’s no question in my mind they will pass inspection.”
-USAC Competition Director, Henry Banks
So the game changed dramatically when USAC announced that the annulus inlet for turbine engines in 1968 would be reduced from 24 inches to 16 inches. Critically, the rules stated that this measurement was to be made “at the first set of blades.” Instead of producing a blistering 1,300 horsepower, the General Electric T58 turbine engine, used in the Shelby-Wallis cars would be severely limited to barely half of their normal output.
The engineering and fabrication staff at Wallis’ California shop worked at a hectic pace to overcome the handicap. Wallis chose to bypass USAC’s limitations by installing the required 16-inch annulus ring at the engine’s inlet, but removing most of the first set of rotating blades behind it. As a result, the measurement of the annulus “at the first set of blades” – most of which were removed – would indeed be within the 16-inch limit. However, the few blades remaining at that point were largely symbolic and would not restrict air flow as the rule intended.
Wallis spoke directly with USAC Competition Director Henry Banks and outlined the team’s plan. Banks personally examined the annulus inlet and blade arrangement and offered a pleasant surprise when he said, “If they bring the cars to the speedway using the parts I have seen and the way they say they will, there’s no question in my mind they will pass inspection.”
Work at the Torrance shop continued at a fever pitch. Engineer David Norton, who had recently quit his job at an aerospace firm to accept an offer from Wallis, recalled, “In a race, the deadlines are absolute. You’re either ready to go or you’re not. I was only there two months (and) we were under that kind of pressure the whole time.
“During that time we finished up the design and worked on the fabrication of the two cars. Those two months were wonderful. I was working with a great bunch of guys.”
USAC regulations severely limited the General Electric Turbine’s power output to almost half of its potential.
When the first fully prepared car with a modified engine was shipped to Indianapolis, no one crossed their fingers tighter than Ken Wallis.
After three days toiling around the clock in late February 1968, the first car was finally ready for testing but the engine was not. The modified annulus system was still not allowing sufficient air into the engine, so Wallis decided to conduct the March 1st and 2nd tests at Riverside International Raceway with a standard, unmodified engine. The tests were modestly successful but ultimately of little practical value because the engine was not legal for Indy.
The following weekend the car was shipped to Phoenix International Raceway – still equipped with an unmodified engine – for its first drive on an oval. A constant rain limited Denny Hulme to 58 laps of largely useless work. “But according to Wallis (the car) worked very well,” Norton said. “Of course, according to Wallis everything was perfect.”
The car was strikingly beautiful and the press enthusiastically reported on the tests, but deep within the organization the first signs of serious trouble were already evident. With barely 10 weeks remaining before the Indy 500 the GE turbine engines were still unfinished. Time was becoming a major factor. Worse yet, testing had shown that reducing the number of blades at the first annulus ring was not producing the power they needed.
Goodyear’s funding was made via installments while Wallis’ expenses were mostly up front. As a result his engineering company was falling behind on payments to multiple contractors who were running out of patience.
The stress was mounting and it all fell on the shoulders of the team principal. So when the first fully prepared car with a modified engine was shipped to Indianapolis for testing on March 10th, no one crossed their fingers tighter than Ken Wallis.
Two of the biggest names in motorsports – Goodyear and Shelby – had lent their names to the project and failure was not an option.
PART II: INDIANAPOLIS
The Shelby/Wallis turbine arrived at Indianapolis unpainted. The rivets in the bodywork were visible across the cowling. It bore no number, no color and no sponsor decals. Still, it was a lovely machine and confidence on the team ran high. Norton recalled, “Everybody at the shop was convinced that we were going to beat them. We had the best rig running. We had the technology.”
Bruce McLaren sat low in the cockpit, situated far to the right, ready to begin the car’s first test on a superspeedway. The heavy engine was to the driver’s left, strategically placing much of the car’s weight on the inside of the turns. The design was clean and aerodynamic. There were no wings and only two air scoops. One was in the car’s slender nose; the other atop the engine cowling. Slight bulges around the driver and the turbine gave the car a powerful, modern appearance.
But McLaren’s best laps in the car were clocked at only 158 mph. Pole speeds were projected to be over 170 mph, meaning that the much-vaunted Shelby-Wallis Turbines would be lucky to qualify for the race at all, let alone win it.
McLaren’s comments were unflattering. “If you really want to know, it’s a bit like a cross between a Sherman tank and a Formula Ford,” he informed a shocked and disappointed Wallis. It was clear that while the new 16-inch restriction on the turbine engine was the primary problem, it was by no means the only problem.
Visually, the car appeared trim and balanced. Racing enthusiasts couldn’t help but fall in love with it. But the scales showed that the Shelby-Wallis Turbine was obese. Original calculations estimated its final weight at a competitive 1,400 pounds, but in full fighting trim it bloated to nearly 1,800 pounds. The additional weight affected everything from braking to cornering and acceleration.
An unpainted Shelby/Wallis turbine arrives at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The design was clean and aerodynamic. There were no wings and only two air scoops. One was in the car’s slender nose; the other atop the engine cowling. Slight bulges around the driver and the turbine gave the car a powerful, modern appearance.
Ken Wallis was running out of time. One of his cars was already at Indy and another was nearing completion in Torrance, but neither was anywhere near a race-ready condition. His drivers, McLaren and Hulme, had only a six-day window before they returned to Europe to fulfill their commitments to drive in the Spanish Grand Prix.
Following the test at Indy, the car was shipped back to Torrance for final race preparations. It was here, in the final days before returning to Indianapolis for practice on May 1, that Wallis radically changed his approach.
Driven by desperation, the Englishman designed a new annulus that risked blatantly violating USAC regulations. When measured in the pits by technical inspectors, the re-designed annulus was within the legal 16-inch mandate. But at full throttle on the race track, a variable valve system opened to permit greater air flow into the turbine that was far beyond legal limits.
If USAC caught wind of the change and declared it illegal, it would be an unmitigated disaster not only for the team principals, but also for Goodyear, their drivers and their sponsors. But the expectations for Wallis were extremely high while time was extremely short. Wallis had simply run out of options. He installed the variable annulus on both of his raceready cars and took them back to Indianapolis in the final days of April 1968.
Financial pressures finally reached critical mass. Accusations of fiscal mismanagement plagued Wallis’ Torrance shop, as David Norton and the rest of the engineering staff found out in a shocking way.
“The only information we got was what little dribbled back to the crew. And anything that comes to the crew is, of course, all blue skies and green lights. We didn’t hear anything negative at our end,” Norton said. “The cars left the shop on a Saturday. I came to work on Monday morning (April 29, 1968) and there was a lock on the door. It was all over and done with. The cars were off to Indianapolis and your job is done, thank you very much. I did not see it coming at all. We were absolutely, completely blindsided. The cars had left. You’re done. Goodbye.”
May 1st and 2nd were spent getting Bruce McLaren through his mandatory rookie test at Indy in the ShelbyWallis turbine.
The situation was even more troubling than what Norton and the Torrance employees knew. The lock on the door had been installed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department pursuant to a court order issued after a contractor working on the car’s hydraulic drive system had sued for non-payment.
At the eleventh hour, the Botany 500 clothing brand decided to sponsor the team with an influx of $25,000. But even this amount of cash paled in comparison to what Wallis needed to settle his company’s debts.
Carroll Shelby intervened and mediated a cease fire with Wallis’ creditors. The cars were immediately flown to Indianapolis before they could be seized through any new court orders. All of Wallis’ assets were then transferred to Shelby’s ownership. For better or worse, Carroll Shelby was now in deeper than ever while Wallis’ influence over his own creation continued to diminish.
The crew members on-site at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway were not told of the fiscal disaster in Torrance. Rather, May 1st and 2nd were spent getting Bruce McLaren through his mandatory rookie test at Indy in the Shelby-Wallis turbine. Over the May 4-5 weekend, Denny Hulme practiced the team’s second car at 157.2 mph and found that even the variable annulus wasn’t providing the power they hoped for.
“Driving the thing is weird,” McLaren told a reporter at Indy. “You sit in it and press the brake pedal. They plug in a starter and it gradually winds up til it’s whistling and then they flick some switches and it sort of goes ‘Booo... whoosh.’ You open the throttle and it still just coasts along, for about three seconds, that is. And then you’ve got 600, 700 or 800 horsepower... all at once. It’s like trying to write with a rubber pen.”
“Driving the thing is weird. You open the throttle and it still just coasts along, for about three seconds. And then you’ve got 600, 700 or 800 horsepower... all at once.”
-Bruce McLaren
“The acceleration out of a corner is just unreal... Bruce and Denny both said that the cars were plenty fast to qualify, but were not safe to drive in race traffic.”
-Goodyear Racing - Manager of Public Relations, Dick Ralstin
Carroll Shelby was nervous. Neither driver was happy with the car and both were under time constraints due to their Formula One commitments. Shelby needed a backup driver in case either Hulme or McLaren walked away from the ride. He looked up Al Unser on pit road at Indy, explained the situation, and asked if Unser was interested in stepping into the seat if either team driver abandoned the project. He was. Despite the car’s lack of speed, Unser knew it was a historic car with tremendous untapped potential. The two men agreed to put together a deal if the opportunity presented itself.
As Goodyear Racing’s Manager of Public Relations Dick Ralstin pointed out, the Shelby-Wallis Turbine was one of auto racing’s ultimate ironies. The car was an incredible feat of engineering that was indeed fast if only it could be made controllable. Ralstin recalled his conversations with both drivers at Indy, saying, “The acceleration out of a corner is just unreal... Bruce and Denny both said that the cars were plenty fast to qualify, but were not safe to drive in race traffic.”
The Shelby-Wallis turbine was ahead of its time. The fact that Wallis had designed, built and delivered a race car from scratch in a matter of months was an engineering miracle of the highest order. But Wallis’ turbine was also wickedly unpredictable on the race track and in all likelihood completely illegal under USAC regulations.
Despite every effort he made to the contrary, Ken Wallis’ problems were about to go from bad to worse.
The reputation of all the turbines was at stake. What began as a disappointment was spiraling into a disaster.
PART III: THE END
The variable annulus simply didn’t work. By Tuesday afternoon, May 7th, neither driver had exceeded 162 mph. The team was a full 10 miles per hour below their expectations.
Late that afternoon, a turbine driver on a different team crashed heavily in Turn 1. British ace Mike Spence was driving for Lotus when he hit the wall and was taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries (he would die later that evening).
Now the reputation of all the turbines was at stake, and what began as a disappointment was spiraling into an out-of-control disaster that could no longer be contained.
Rumors of the illegal annulus spread through the Indianapolis garage area like wildfire. No one on the ShelbyWallis team knew what to do. Many of them didn’t know about the illegal annulus, and the ones who did denied it. No one was even sure exactly what would happen if USAC learned the dirty little secret. Things were unraveling quickly.
When Hulme and McLaren learned of the variable annulus, they knew they had to tell someone. There was no point in going to Wallis; he obviously already knew. They weren’t sure if Carroll Shelby knew but they couldn’t take the risk. If he did, he was very good at playing dumb. So they went to Larry Truesdale, racing manager at Goodyear, and told him that the car wasn’t legal. Truesdale met with Goodyear Public Relations manager Dick Ralstin and shared the problem.
Meanwhile, as Wallis was running out of ideas and losing his grip on the team, Carroll Shelby increasingly leaned on his own chief engineer, Phil Remington, to take control of the situation and make the cars work. After examining the annulus Remington went back to Shelby and offered his resignation, claiming that the cars would be declared illegal and he had no intention of being around when it happened. Shelby responded meekly, claiming that he had no prior knowledge of the annulus scheme (whether that was true will never be known).
If the cars had failed USAC tech inspection, Goodyear could have been fined $100,000 for each car and been banned from the Speedway.
Dick Ralstin slipped away from the garage area and went on a fact-finding mission. As Goodyear’s PR man, he had the most to lose if the whole mess went public. What he learned was frightening. “If the cars had failed USAC tech inspection the next day,” Ralstin recalled, “Goodyear could have been fined $100,000 for each car and been banned from the Speedway... not a pleasant thought for the world’s largest tire company.”
In hushed conversations with USAC, Ralstin said that Goodyear was “invited to leave” while it could still be done quietly.
The team was falling apart. The drivers had no confidence that they could drive the cars in traffic. The strain was beginning to show on Wallis, who was badly stressed and under tremendous financial pressure. Carroll Shelby was faced with his chief engineer’s resignation, he had no one to run the team, and his heart was no longer in the project.
Rumor had it that USAC was preparing for a surprise inspection of the cars, and that was the final death knell for the Shelby-Wallis Turbines.
Larry Truesdale, a former tire salesman, had been promoted to Manager of Racing at Goodyear just months before and could ill afford to have such a mess occur on his watch. Dick Ralstin just wanted the whole nightmare to end before it became a public relations train wreck that could cost him his job.
Armed with USAC’s invitation to depart, Ralstin and Truesdale hastily organized a meeting late on Friday evening. Shelby, Remington and Wallis were among only a handful of people to attend. The small group met secretly in Truesdale’s room at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Motel, which stood just outside of Turn 2.
The decision was made quickly. Team members were quietly dismissed. McLaren and Hulme returned to Europe and their Formula One rides. A note was pinned to the garage door on pit road indicating that the team had withdrawn from the Indianapolis 500.
Wallis was crushed. He had lost everything. His business was closed, his team was in ruins and he was buried in debt. He had lost his amazing but underdeveloped race cars, all of his assets and his reputation. One by one, team members left the room until only he remained.
“The last time I saw Ken Wallis,” Ralstin said, “he was in Truesdale’s room at the Speedway motel, crying.”
The beautiful, innovative Shelby-Wallis Turbines were loaded onto a trailer and whisked away without turning a single lap of competition in the race they were supposed to dominate. Their departure signaled the end of an era in the history of the Indy 500. The once-great turbine-powered cars were outlawed. So was the thinking that created them.
“Out of the box thinking and creativity was the norm,” Norton remembered. “But you just don’t have the Novis and the turbines and the diesels any more. That sort of innovation is gone.”
“It was the end of the golden days at Indianapolis.”
This ground-breaking innovation, never given the chance to dominate the track as it was arguably born to do, will now have its moment in the spotlight at The Daytime Auction in Monterey. The No. 66 Turbine-Powered 1968 Shelby Indy Car that was developed and tested by Bruce McLaren for his initial Indy 500 rookie debut will be offered for sale Saturday, August 16 at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa on Del Monte Golf Course.
