The 1961 Devrim Automobile (TÜRASAŞ Museum), Haller and Vecihi Hürkuş Park

Five minutes' walk north-west of the Eskişehir YHT High-Speed Train Station and Espark Shopping Mall sits a free museum housing one of the most beloved symbols of modern Turkish engineering: the 1961 Devrim ("Revolution") Automobile.

1. The Story of the 1961 "Devrim" Car (At the TÜRASAŞ / TÜLOMSAŞ Devrim Museum, Free)

In June 1961, President Cemal Gürsel instructed twenty-three Turkish railway engineers at the Eskişehir Railway Factories (Cer Atölyesi, today TÜRASAŞ) to design and build a 100% domestic Turkish passenger car from scratch, including casting the engine block, transmission, body panels and electrical system by hand, in time for the Republic Day parade on 29 October 1961. Working day and night in a single workshop shed with a countdown calendar on the wall, the engineers accomplished the seemingly impossible in just 129 days, producing four hand-beaten prototypes (immortalised in the 2008 Turkish film Devrim Arabaları / Cars of the Revolution):

• What Happened on Republic Day 1961: on the morning of 29 October in Ankara, President Gürsel stepped into the black prototype (#2) before its fuel tank had been topped up at the gas station; after the car sputtered to a halt 100 metres down the avenue, the President transferred to the cream-coloured Devrim (#1) and completed the entire parade. Because newspapers ran the headline "Devrim ran out of petrol", mass production was cancelled, though the engine had worked flawlessly, prompting lead engineer Rıfat Serdaroğlu's famous quip: "We built a car with the Western mind, and forgot to put petrol in it with the Eastern mind."
• The Surviving Working Prototype (#0002): inside a climate-controlled glass pavilion in the factory garden rests the only surviving 1961 cream-coloured Devrim prototype in the world, still in full running condition with its original licence plate 0002, accompanied by the original welding tools, engine blocks and the 1961 Karakurt (Turkey's first domestic main-line steam locomotive) at the station plaza.

2. Vecihi Hürkuş Aviation and Technology Park (Havacılık Müzesi)

Because Eskişehir has been the main jet-pilot training and maintenance hub of the Turkish Air Force since the 1920s, stop along the Yunus Emre Bulvarı ring road (near Anadolu University / Sazova) at the Vecihi Hürkuş Aviation Park to walk beneath retired F-4 Phantom, F-104 Starfighter, F-5 and C-47 Dakota aircraft in an open-air museum garden.