Driving the Jet Vette, an 880-hp, turbine-engined piece of car history

Starting the only known street-legal, jet-engined Corvette is easy. Push the buttons on the console to turn on the igniters inside the Pratt & Whitney turbine (assuming you've put jet A fuel into the tank, although it will run on nearly anything that burns.) Engage the starter so the turbines begin spinning up to 30,000 rpm. Push in a T-handle that looks like a choke from a 1940s sedan, and once the engine's at speed, turn the igniters off. Don't worry — you'll know when it's running by the sound of a jet surrounding you.

The Jet Vette was the creation of Andy and Vince Granatelli, created in 1978 a decade after Andy Granatelli had nearly won the Indianapolis 500 with the most radical race car of its age: four-wheel-drive, Lotus-built turbine cars. The only turbine Lotus in private hands — the 1968 Lotus 56-3 — and the Jet Vette will go up for sale on Jan. 17 at Barrett-Jackson's auction in Scottsdale, and even amid an event numbering 1,400 cars, the Granatelli turbine duo stands out.

Rare pieces of automotive history that may soon sell for seven figures aren't often given to journalists to drive. But Milton Verret, the Austin, Texas, collector who's selling the pair, had no qualms about putting his prizes on a track in California and letting strangers take the wheel — albeit with lots of guidance. After all, that was one of the reasons turbines were once thought of as the next big step in personal transportation; once up to speed they were dead simple, and with far fewer moving parts than a gas engine, likely to last far longer.

Granatelli, the former chairman of STP who used racing in the '50s and '60s to make the company famous, had a lifelong desire to race and win the Indy 500. His first turbine car — nicknamed "the whoosh-mobile" by Speedway wags — came within a few laps of the checkered flag in 1967, when a $6 bearing failed. Despite a rule change by organizers meant to make Granatelli's turbines uncompetitive, he returned in 1968 with another set of Lotus cars, and for the first time in any racer, an aerodynamic wedge shape. The Lotus 56 broke the Indy 500 qualifying record that year with a speed of 171 mph, and two paced the field.