Porsche made turbochargers the default choice for high performance sports cars. Saab proved them practical in everyday cars. And BMW, in the striking shape of the 1973 2002 Turbo, showed that a turbocharged production car could be fun and fast.
These pedigree European makers are the most famous pioneers and advocates of the dark art of turbocharging. Indeed, history and popular prejudice credits them as the turbocharging innovators, but as Henry Ford said, albeit it in a rather different context, ‘history is more or less bunk’. Because they weren’t the first. Or anything close to it. They came years after the true heroes of our story. But as regulars of this Real Pioneers series will know, the cars credited with being the first rarely were.
Instead, we need to look across the Atlantic, and back a further decade, to discover the true trailblazers. Actually I’m tempted to look all the way back to 1952, where we discover one of the great automotive pub quiz questions, namely ‘What was unusual about the car that took pole at the 1952 Indianapolis 500 at an average speed of over 138mph?’ To which the surprising answer is that it was powered by an engine that was not only turbocharged, but ran on diesel. But as there was only one, and we’re in the realm of the road car, we’ll leave it there. But spool forward another 10 years to find yourself at General Motors, then the world’s biggest and richest car company. In those days it was also one of the technically boldest, an attribute sadly long left at the wayside. To foster this, its Chevrolet and Oldsmobile divisions maintained separate engineering departments and engine families. This intense rivalry drove competition and innovation.
