1969 SE-124 Chevelle Converted to Steam by Bill Besler - YouTube

Article says GM paid him to do this.
1969 Chevelle GM steam conversion

@tree There is inaccuracy in the article where the author claims it was a 305 cubic inch V-8 that would have been a 307 in 1969.
305 and 307 Chevrolet engines were both bad combinations of bores and strokes based on existing engines being produced at the time,so they were never popular or made lots of power.

The 307 was based on the bore of the ever popular 283 with a 327 stroke that was out of proportion to it,so it wasn't favorable to top end power. Both of these other engines were very successful using their original designed parts combinations,but produced a boat anchor if they were combined.

The 305 was based on the stroke of the 350 with a smaller bore that once again used a crankshaft out of an existing design. The bore was too small to be very effective at the 350 stroke.

The 350 Chevy was designed to compete with the other GM divisions for displacement who all went the 350 cubic inch route to offer something a bit more powerful.The truth of the matter was,the 350 shared the same bore as the 327,but in the long run impeded it's RPM capability by having too long of a stroke.

Anyone who plays with older performance small block Chevrolet engines can tell you how much more superior the older 327 small crank journal engines were when it came to making high RPM power.
In the latter part of the 1960s,Chevrolet made the decision to produce the last of the 327s with the larger crank journal 350 connecting rods and bearings in the interest of saving costs that destroyed what was one a magical combination of bores and strokes by adding additional rotating and reciprocating mass that destroyed the high RPM performance of the older generation units.

At first I thought the car was just for a novelty, privately.
I was surprised that GM paid him to do it.
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2010/05/17/who-killed-the-steamturbine-powered-car/
And I didn't know there was another.

There were lots of experiments done behind the scenes back then.

Most of the builds were internal to the manufacturers,with some of the work farmed out. I guess it had a lot to do with who you knew even back then.