Turbo-Sonic

The Turbo-Sonic was designed by world-famous custom car builder George Barris. The Turbo-Sonic was Barris’s attempt to draw a crowd by creating a drag car that looked like a jet aircraft. It was designed as a 25th-century three-wheel racing car to develop speeds of 300 mph in a quarter-mile racing strip, powered by a 1,000 horsepower S-28 gas turbine engine.

This vehicle was originally built for the movie “Tom Jones Garage A Go-Go” starring Walter Brennan. Constructed using a combination of monocoque and crossframe construction with an alloy tube frame plus a lunamite sheet stock, the vehicle also featured fiberglass fireproof lightweight wings. Controls were operated on a four-stage solenoid electrical system for safety, with inner-cockpit fuel mixture switches and a remote control unit for testing stages 50 feet away from the automobile.

The driver sat in complete safety in a fireproof cockpit encased in a unitized cross tube frame roll bar. The S-28 gas turbine engine operated through a V-drive gear reduction unit, and directly into a reversed ring and pinion rear end which drove each wheel independently, turning 92,000 revolutions per minute and reduced to 16 to 1, developing 8,000 revolutions per minute at the wheels.

For stopping the vehicle, a combination of an offset blown parachute plus four stabilizer wing flaps were used, and for low-speed stopping, Airheart spot disc brakes were employed.

Designed and built by Barris Kustom City, its test driver was Skip Torgeson, whose name still appears on the car. This car’s engineering and styling were contributions by Les Tompkins, Dick Dean (whose name still appears on the car), and Tom Daniels. The craftsmanship and innovative design elements showcase the forward-thinking vision of George Barris and his team.

The Turbo-Sonic underwent a massive restoration in 2013, and was auctioned off to a private collector in 2016. Here is a video walkthrough of the vehicle after the restoration: https://youtu.be/ZLAAijxRJdw?si=ionMG5R5JW8CpmTm