Just Cool Cars: '68 Indy turbine racer is most patriotic

CARMEL VALLEY, Calif. -- The most patriotic vehicle? We come across so many among our Just Cool Cars.

This Fourth of July, we considered which of the hundreds of cars that we've profiled represents America's best. We settled on the he "whooshmobile," as it sometimes is called.

At least that's how its current owner, Milton Verret of Austin, Texas, describes it. When we talked to him, he owned a piece of automotive history, the 1968 Lotus Type 56-3 turbine car that took on the piston-powered racers at the Indianapolis 500. Andy Granatelli's No. 70 didn't win, but it proved its mettle on the track.

"It was running against all the gas cars and it was beating them for a long time," Verret told us over the summer at the Quail Motorsports Reunion car show on a golf course here.

Verret's car starts up sounding like a jet engine rather than any car. He says he loves the "sound of it, the feel of it." He says he drove it himself around the Brickyard before the big race last year.

At 160 miles per hour or more, "it's so smooth," Verret says.

Love it as he may, Verret is putting No. 70 with its Pratt & Whitney turbine up for sale at the Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Ariz., which starts today and runs through Jan. 18.