When the 1960s rolled around, all of a sudden every single assumption anyone ever had was open to debate: Who says those guys can’t vote? Who says that particular half of the population has to stay home and raise babies? Who says race cars have to be powered by piston engines mounted in the front? Racing at Indianapolis was one of the many apple carts overturned by the tumult of that decade.

First, the engines shifted to the back, behind the driver. Then, the whole idea of internal combustion got a rethinking. Why, for instance, did power have to come from pistons thwack-thwack-thwacking up and down in a line? Why not try something completely different? Only a few short years after the rear-engine revolution at Indy, along came Andy Granatelli, STP and Pratt & Whitney to upset the whole apple cart again with the gas turbine, a massive side pod of a goiter slung onto the car next to the driver like a gargantuan, 171-mph sausage delivery wagon.

There had been turbines at Indy before, of course. Boeing tried them out in the 1950s. Carroll Shelby tried to sneak one past the scrutineers. Even Mississippi State University worked on one. But it was the Granatelli turbines that everyone remembers, and not just for the electric fluorescent orangish-pink paint jobs. The first ones were large, oblong vegetable-looking things with the monster turbine mounted longitudinally parallel to the driver. Parnelli Jones almost won the 1967 Indy 500 in one of those, dropping out on lap 197 with a minor mechanical failure. For the following year’s race, Granatelli enlisted Colin Chapman to build the Type 56 Lotus, the car you see here. The design was going to be new, with the turbine located behind the driver instead of next to him. It was still longitudinally mounted but now took up less frontal area and could go faster.

Experiments with aerodynamics on race cars were still in their early stages. Thus the Type 56 had no wings on it, but it did have a slanted wedge shape that, while it didn’t provide downforce, eliminated lift, according to Clive Chapman, Colin’s son.

Clive Chapman is managing director of Classic Team Lotus in Hethel, England, the company that did the restoration on this car.

“I think you’ll agree that this is one of the most extraordinary cars that has ever been,” he said when the newly restored car was unveiled at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California.

We agree. This is one of only a few turbine race cars in existence and perhaps in the best condition of any of them. It ran only that one race, with Graham Hill behind the wheel. Hill was first out of the box during qualifying and set a new track record. His teammate Joe Leonard beat him to the pole in another Granatelli turbine. Hill lost a wheel in the race, hit the wall and was out of contention. Yet another statistic to back up the fact that no turbine car ever won Indy. That’s the extent of this car’s track life.

Clive Chapman shows off Turbine race car which his company restored.

Later the current owner, marketing entrepreneur Milton Verret, “…drove it all over Beaumont, Texas.” (You can get away with a lot in Texas.) After that, just a couple weeks ago, when Verret wanted to drum up interest in the car before it goes to auction Jan. 17 in Scottsdale, we were offered a couple laps. That’s a pretty cool opportunity for anyone who remembers the original car in all its Indy glory.

There were a few caveats for our drive, aimed at preserving the car for sale. Since it still had the original Firestones from 46 years ago, we were going to be held to a top speed of under 100 mph. And since they didn’t want any repeat of Chapman’s racing incident, we would follow a pace car. But we would be on the banking of the 2.5-mile oval-shaped Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., where the Indy car lap record is 241 mph set by Gil de Ferran in 2000. So we had hope.

Unlike the 2006 Renault F1 car we drove a couple weeks before, the Lotus Type 56 is remarkably simple. First, you have to fit into it. The steering wheel does not come off so you have to slither your lower half around it then feed your feet under the front axle of the four wheel-drive rig and slot them into the pedals. For that they remove the nose of the car and someone wedges your right foot into the clamp-like gas pedal (the better to help lift should you have to lift). You left foot sits atop the brake pedal, which you will be using a lot.

Then a solemn technician wheels out a big battery cart, plugs it in and what sounds like a jet engine starts whirring. It sounds like it because it is; a Pratt & Whitney ST-6B turbine that sounds like your own personal Lear Jet strapped to your back.

To drive this thing, all you have to do is steer and hold back the turbine thrust with the brake pedal. If everything should go horribly wrong, there’s a T-shaped handle on the left that you’re supposed to pull that stops the turbine.

Then, whoosh, you’re off, jetting down Fontana’s half-mile-long pit straight and up onto the banking. The pace car was a Lotus Evora, which was capable of triple digits, certainly, but felt like it was doing about 80 or 90 mph. We had no idea how fast we were going but we’d been faster on this oval in one of those pretend drive-an-Indy car deals a few years before. In those we were supposed to have hit 140 mph, and that drive felt a lot faster -- you feel your helmet being tugged up off your head and you can sense some g force through the corners.

Nonetheless, this was one of the coolest, if not the coolest things, we’d ever experienced. The history! The technology! The thrill! We could imagine the crew wearing those STP-stickered jump suits, the crowd, Granatelli himself ready to give us a victory smack with what Parnelli Jones once said were “…them big ol’ lips.”

That's a Pratt & Whitney ST6N-74 gas turbine. It made 500 hp.

If we were to buy this (hey, we could sell the house and the car and… OK, we couldn’t buy this), we’d figure out some tires and whatever else was necessary and start edging it up to as close to 200 mph as we dared. Graham Hill ran it at 170 mph or so before his teammate Joe Leonard grabbed the pole in an identical car at 171.208 mph. We could imagine driving this at maybe 90 percent of that speed. Maybe? Couldn’t we?

The restoration was incredibly thorough, with input from Vince Granatelli, original STP and Lotus team members and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum. So this restoration should be, in our opinion, just as safe as the original car was on the track.

And it’s not all that hard to drive. Underway the car just whooshes. There are no gears to shift and not much steering to do. A couple stabs on the accelerator confirmed what Parnelli Jones had said about the 1967 turbine car at Indy -- there’s about three seconds of turbine lag before you get going. Then off you go. If only that Evora wasn’t in the way.

Young Vince Granatelli liked turbines so much he put one in a 1978 Corvette. It drove like a jet plane taxiing.

How much will it go for when it crosses the block at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale on Jan. 17? Who knows? Over a half-million bucks, easy, we’d guess.

If that’s too much sticker shock, Verret is also selling Vince Granatelli’s Jet Vette at the same auction. Carrying on the family tradition, Vince -- the son of Andy -- Granatelli put another ST-6B turbine into a 1978 Corvette for a claimed 880 hp. Verret said that car will do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. We drove that car, too, at the same track. Bring ear plugs, we’d say, and get ready for some kind of new experience. It was like having a private jet in your lap, or strapped to your helmet, or something: it was loud, breezy and somewhat terrifying, the latter in a good way. Again, we were limited as to top speed, this time with an official passenger, but we might have gone faster than we did in the Indy car. This car would thrill the locals at your neighborhood cars 'n’ coffee, or down at the Bob’s Big Boy drive-in, that’s for sure. So you should consider that. After that, you’d have to get creative to keep ownership interesting. We’d suggest travelling the country doing demos at drag races. Surely there’s big bucks in that, yes?

Either way you’ll get a thrilling ride.

“It was absolutely the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” said Clive Chapman, after Verret offered him, too, a few laps in the Indy car.

That’s two ringing endorsements. If you buy the Type 56, please let us know when you’re going to drive it. We’d be happy to come offer tips and maybe warm it up before you get in. Just to be helpful.

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