In the quest for cleaner, safer energy, experiments have to be undertaken to provide validation to the theory someone has presented. Take turbine energy, for example: works great as a propulsion source for giant metal tubes with wings, but doesn’t pan out so well in a car, regardless of how long Chrysler kept plugging away at the idea. Electric cars used to be rooted in the earliest days of the vehicle, but lately they’ve made one hell of a resurgence…just ask a Tesla owner, they’ll be more than happy to tell you all about it. Nuclear was an option for about half a second, before someone wondered what would happen if a nuclear-powered car ever got into an accident, and that leaves steam. Steam has it’s uses and does function well, but for passenger car use, it’s a bit bulky to wheel around a giant, pressurized boiler and a constant fire. Or is it?

In 1969, in the pursuit of cleaner power, General Motors tapped a man by the name of Bill Bessler to convert a plain-jane, 307-powered Chevelle sedan into a steam-powered machine. The 307 was hacksawed in half, leaving the rearmost four cylinders hooked up to the three-on-the-tree manual transmission, while a monotube boiler and a fuel atomizer were used to create the steam. Due to restrictions on boiler size (everything had to fit underhood), the Chevelle would up making about 55 horsepower, yet it functioned well, with 5,000 miles being added to the odometer before GM realized that they were chasing a pipe dream. The Chevelle spent twenty years residing in Harrah’s Casino in Las Vegas before winding up in private ownership, where Steve Lehto caught up with it. The car isn’t in perfect shape, but it’s all there and the restoration would be fairly easy to perform. There’s even a chance that the steam engine could work again!