We Found Ford's Incredible Turbine-Powered Semi-Truck 'Big Red' That's Been Lost for Decades

The 40-year search for an unbelievable piece of history is over. You have questions? We have answers.

By Peter Holderith March 24, 2021

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Several months ago, we set out to catch a ghost. First seen at the 1964 World's Fair alongside a fun new car called the Mustang, Ford's "Big Red" was the automaker's experimental gas turbine semi-truck, a moonshot experiment built to lift American motoring into the jet age. Thirteen feet tall, nearly 100 feet long with its tandem trailers, packed with truly futuristic features and powered by a monster 600-horsepower turbine engine, the fully-functional prototype was a wonder to behold. It wowed fair attendees and captured the imaginations of thousands on a cross-country promotional tour that followed. Then, it was mothballed when turbine technology didn't add up. It changed hands by chance, people lost interest, and years after the 10-ton fire-breather barreled down America's highways, it vanished.

Though it seems like it'd be pretty tough to hide, Big Red's been missing since the early 1980s. It's perhaps one of the most significant pieces of automotive history to drop off the face of the earth. Ford itself had no idea what happened to it. But now, we do—after months of searching, after our initial investigation last fall got us closer than anyone had been in decades, the hunt is finally over. We've found Big Red. And we can confirm not only that the truck still exists, but that it's been painstakingly restored—working turbine and all—to its former glory by its exceedingly private and equally dedicated owner.

AnonymousBig Red is pictured sometime in the mid-1980s, after its paint restoration was completed.
You have questions? We've got answers. But first, we need to lay out some caveats. After we tracked him down and made contact through an attorney, Big Red's owner—a man who insisted on remaining anonymous for the sake of privacy—finally agreed to share the story of his prized possession with the world under a few strict conditions. We won’t reveal his identity or the truck's current location, which we have confirmed. We can, however,tell you just about everything else: why he bought it, how it was restored, and why it's been kept a secret for 40 years.

In the course of tracking down Big Red, we've also come in contact with several key figures who were involved with the truck at one point or another throughout its history, and we're now able to fill in a lot of gaps in the publicly-known timeline of how it went from being feted at the World's Fair to a discarded curiosity ripe for the picking. We've also found a trove of original Ford documents with technical diagrams, mechanical specs and marketing plans for the mammoth truck, some of which are published here with more coming in a future story soon.

There are still a few grey areas—we don't yethave every moment of Big Red's past documented—but The Drive's effort here represents the first time anyone has nailed down its segmented, mixed-up story in one place. Let's start right where the trail went cold, about 40 years ago.

 

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