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Politicians in the
United States may be touting hydrogen-powered cars as the vehicles of
the future, but a group of former students from the University of
California at Los Angeles knows better.
The group did modify an AMC Gremlin to run on hydrogen back in the early
1970s, after all.
The yellow hatchback was the group's entry in the 1972 Urban Vehicle
Design Competition, a one-time event that brought together 64 North
American universities in a contest to see who could build the most
innovative vehicle. Over the preceding two years, the UCLA team had
painstakingly replaced the Gremlin's engine with a Boss 351 engine from
Ford that had been modified to burn hydrogen instead of gasoline. In the
rear of the hatchback, they installed tanks to hold the hydrogen gas
under high pressure. Then, for safety, they created some of the world's
first low-speed bumpers by packing popcorn into the front and back of
the car.
The result was a vehicle that didn't need a single drop of gasoline and
that emitted nothing but steam.
"Ours was the only vehicle in the competition where you could drink the
exhaust and eat the bumper," said project leader Frank Lynch, who now
owns Colorado-based Hydrogen Components.
Lynch, a self-described "hot-rodder" who liked to work on cars when he
was younger, launched the project in 1970. The college junior posted a
mimeograph on a UCLA bulletin board, asking fellow students to join him
in building a hydrogen-powered vehicle. He got several responses, but
finding a faculty sponsor for the project was not easy.
"Professors tend to be busy, and a lot of people were a little leery of
hydrogen at the time," said UCLA professor William Van Vorst, now
retired, who joined the project soon after the design competition in
1972.
Though researchers had experimented with hydrogen-combustion engines as
early as 1820, the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 had tempered enthusiasm
for the gas, especially in situations where the risk for accidents was
high, said Van Vorst.
"The idea that you could run a modern car on hydrogen was considered
pretty far out," said Van Vorst. "Frank (Lynch) was pretty remarkable in
that he had the idea."
Lynch did manage to find a faculty sponsor, however, in engineering
professor Albert Bush (who died in 1976). Together with students Joe
Finegold, Ned Baker and several others, the group set out to collect the
parts they would need to build a hydrogen-powered car.
American Motors donated the Gremlin to the project. Ford provided a
powerful Boss 351 engine, the same kind used in limited-edition Mustangs
at the time. Other parts came from a multitude of vendors and
manufacturers, thanks mainly to Finegold's finesse, said Lynch.
"If I was the chairman, then Finegold was like the vice chairman of the
activity," said Lynch. "He was such a sweet-talker. He went to Barris
(Kustom Industries) out in the Valley and got us a roll cage that came
through the roof of the car and became a luggage rack."
From auto parts manufacturers Hooker and Edelbrock came various
specialty engine components. From a division of Union Carbide came a
tanker full of hydrogen gas for fuel. Impco, a company that specializes
in alternative fuel products, donated parts for managing the hydrogen
fuel.
"Impco gave us anything we wanted, basically," said Lynch. "We wandered
in there in the fall of 1970 and wandered out with a big box full of
hydrogen parts."
Within two years, the team was testing their hydrogen-powered Gremlin on
a chassis dynamometer -- a sort of treadmill for cars. Though the tests
showed that the car could only travel 110 kilometers before it needed to
be refueled, they also revealed that the car emitted slightly cleaner
air than it took in. In other words, driving the car actually reversed
pollution.
Armed with results like these, the team was ready to face the
competition at a General Motors proving ground in Michigan. It was
August 1972.
The entries in the Urban Vehicle Design Competition included cars
powered by everything from hydrogen and propane to ammonia -- and the
team soon realized that theirs wasn't the best car in every category.
"In style, we got beat out by a natural-gas car by the University of
British Columbia," said Lynch. "That car was absolutely customized, from
the ground up."
When it came to speed, the UCLA team got beat again. "There was a Mopar
hot
rod that ran on propane and kicked everybody's butt in the drag race,"
said Lynch.
But when it came to emissions, the judges noted the benefit of having a
car that not only expelled nothing but steam, but also removed a slight
amount of pollution from the air. They awarded the car the prize for low
emissions. And when the raw score for the entire contest was calculated,
the team realized they had also won the overall competition.
For Lynch, the victory was more than a chance to revel in the success of
his project -- it was the beginning of a career. After the competition,
a small group of engineers approached him to talk about a potential
startup opportunity developing hydrogen fuel products.
"I got job offers because of that competition," said Lynch. "I took a
career from it. So in a sense, I'm still trying to finish my senior
project."
Lynch has since started his own business, Hydrogen Components, which
develops hydrogen-related products and technologies. The company's
clients have included the Army, the Chicago Transit Authority and Ford,
among others, and it recently sold several patents for a new type of
fuel that mixes hydrogen and natural gas, according to Lynch.
The company has also worked on projects for NASA. In one case, the staff
researched ways to pull hydrogen out of rocks on the moon, said Lynch.
In theory, the hydrogen had been deposited there by solar winds and, if
harnessed, could be used by astronauts as an energy source.
Though the project never got much further than the research phase, the
space agency is again looking at ways to fuel a moon base now that
President Bush has announced his vision for sending humans back to the
moon and onward to Mars.
As for the Gremlin, the car stayed at UCLA and received quite a bit of
attention from auto manufacturers and government agencies when, in 1973,
an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries led to an energy crisis in the United States. Over the next
several months, the Gremlin received a number of upgrades, paid for by
the Department of Transportation. Van Vorst and fellow professor Al
Ullman even convinced the U.S. Postal Service to fund the development of
a second alternative vehicle -- a Jeep mail truck that used liquid
rather than gaseous hydrogen.
But the crisis soon ended, and interest in alternative-fuel vehicles
waned. Funding for the Jeep ran out before it was completed. The project
team disbanded and the Gremlin sat unused.
Finally, in 1984, UCLA sold the Gremlin to Harrah's Automobile Museum in
Reno for $1. After the Harrah's hotel and casino was renovated in 1989,
much of the collection was sold to private collectors. A spokeswoman for
the National Automobile Museum, the nonprofit that now runs the museum,
said the Gremlin was likely sold during that transition, though neither
she nor another museum employee could remember having ever heard of the
car.
Today, with oil at a record $48 per barrel, and with fears of global
warming on the rise, America is again looking at hydrogen as an energy
source. Both President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
have announced initiatives to boost research in the growing field of
hydrogen fuel cells.
Though the new technology is far different from the combustion engine
that powered the Gremlin, Van Vorst said he believes the projects at
UCLA opened the door.
"There isn't a direct line between the Gremlin and today's prototypes,
but we showed that you could run a car on hydrogen in a practical
sense," he said. "It may take another 15 to 20 years before hydrogen
really takes off, but at least we know it can be done." |
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Own a piece of history. This is one of the first modern day
Hydrogen-powered automobile experiments, developed by a team at UCLA.
The car was a collaborative effort with donated components from General
Motors, Ford Motor Company, George Barris (http://www.barris.com ),
Hooker, Edelbrock, Union Carbide and Impco, a company that specializes
in alternative fuel products. Yes, its one of a kind. It won the overall
Urban Vehicle Design Competition in 1972, a one-time event that brought
together 64 North American universities in a contest to see who could
build the most innovative vehicle. A historical article, written by Amit
Asaravala of Wired news, gives the account of the contest and describes
the conception and development of this unusual automobile. See this
article at http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,65080-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next.
Also, see this car with more photos at www.ClassicCarGuy.com Call
Michael 805.544.8080 or 800.670.8224 or email to Michael@ClassicCarGuy.com
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