Well, we can’t just leave it at the Stallion, eh? Sugar in the gas tank will turn the gas into some sort of amazing sludge and destroy the engine (not; it doesn’t even dissolve in gasoline). I grew up with that one looming large in my imaginary revenges. What’s your favorite?
My favorite: the Chevrolet Nova didn’t sell in Mexico and South America because the name was confused with “no va”, Spanish for “doesn’t go”. What a crock. But it persists, and like all urban legends it probably will continue until long after anybody who remembers the Nova is dead and buried.
As in the Starion case, urban legends debunker snopes.com has a great article on the Nova. http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
They have a whole category for cars: http://www.snopes.com/autos/autos.asp
Here’s my favorite: http://www.snopes.com/autos/pinkslip/datsun.asp
Sounds like the guy who needs a ‘710’ cap…(flip it over)
I have a particular theory about how that might have gotten started, or at least spread further. I worked in Spanish language tv (in the US), and the Spanish-language specialty advertising agencies were always trotting that one out to corporate clients, as an example of what can happen if companies aren’t aware of proper language usage. This was part of a sales pitch for their agencies’ services.
Part of the ‘Chevy no go’ legand is elite business schools talking about how “GM is so clueless, lol”. But then they are clueless thinking a Spanish speaking person would literally read a car name as ‘Doesnt run’.
Let’s see . . . probably the one about the Corvette found out in the sticks which had a dead body in it for a really long time, and could be had for cheap. I heard that one when I was in junior high and it really had me thinking (and this was in pre-Snopes, hard-copy chain-letter days, so one had no idea whether such stories were true). Then, of course, the $25 Porsche that the ticked-off ex-lover was selling to extract revenge.
And finally, the 100mpg carburetor conspiracy theory. I carefully followed all of those stories which periodically made it into the local newspapers while I grew up, about local inventors which were working on some sort of high-efficiency system. Most of them involved some sort of heated mixing box in which the air and fuel were combined prior to being drawn into the engine.
I remember one such system that two men in Centralia WA had rigged up on a mid-70s full-sized Buick. They claimed fuel economy above 20mpg, but the downside of their system was the explosive chamber sitting on top of the engine – they did admit in the article that they had blown the hood off of the car at least once!
The other system I specifically remember reading about was some guy in Idaho who had rigged up a bed-mounted fuel tank in an old International Scout. There was enough surface area over the fuel in the tank (a large, flat tank probably from one of those GM cars with the tank right underneath the trunk) that he was able to draw vapor off of the tank that had a high enough concentration of gasoline to be combustible. He had disconnected the fuel line to the carburetor and had a 2.5″ hose connected to the air horn on the single-barrel carb which ran over the cab and connected to the fuel filler neck on the tank in the back.
Do fuel line magnets and air intake flow disturbers count as urban legends?
Those are examples of “vapor phase” carburetion. IIRC, the original design for the “100MPG carburetor” was basically a mass of cotton batton in a basket over the intake, with a dripper system which soaked the cotton with gasoline. The engine sucked intake air and gas fumes through the cotton. It may have actually gotten 100MPG, but this would have been around 1900, so the engine was probably 15hp in a car with a max speed of 30MPH!
Recently, I read a story about a wood-powered pickup truck. Some guy put a sealed tank in the bed of his pickup with a heating apparatus below it. He fills the tank with wood and pipes the fumes released from heating it up to the intake of his engine.
The engine the Wright brothers designed and built for the Flyer used a similar vapour induction system… Wood fire vapour-fueled setups were common during WWII due to petrol rationing.
(going from memory here, google can probably correct the details)
I’ve seen reports of German trucks in WWII being powered by wood vapor (not very efficiently) due to the lack of petroleum-based fuel toward the end of the war. I believe there’s also a scene in The Road where a truck is powered in this way.
Wood burning cars and trucks were common in Europe during the WW2 years. They sold conversion kits. The wood was burned slowly, to release the gas inherent in it. This is a Peugeot from France. It was just about the only way to keep one’s car, since gasoline was so short in supply.
Sometimes movies set in the future dress up old cars to look like that, as if the oil ran out. See the tank on the roof of this ’60 Imperial in Blade Runner (imcdb.com).
“Do fuel line magnets and air intake flow disturbers count as urban legends?”
Anything that has a story of someone knowing a friend who had a friend that swears that it worked counts.
Like the “Electric Supercharger”..
Let’s see . . . probably the one about the Corvette found out in the sticks which had a dead body in it for a really long time, and could be had for cheap. I heard that one when I was in junior high and it really had me thinking.
Mythbusters tried that one out just to see if you could get the smell out. They did better than they thought they would with removing the smell but it was still there.
How about the myth that putting mothballs in your gas tank will give your engine more power? I read about that once and it may have been true long ago, but gas has a higher octane rating now, and mothballs are no longer composed of napthalene.
My all time favorite car legend VW bugs. Rumored that people would add gas to a new owners tank at night causing him to rave and praise the gas mileage of his new car. When the owner would be up to about 200 mpg his friends would then start siphoning gas each night and he would end up cursing the machine and taking it back into the dealer complaining of mpg’s in the 5 to 6 range.
It was always a third party relating this in that he knew some of the guys in on the prank but it was never confirmed by anyone this took place.
Also locally as I am sure in all towns there was the tale of the cuckolded husband having a cement truck fill the convertible of the wife’s paramour. This was always claimed to be a well known entrepreneur as the suitor.
The adding/subtracting gas from a neighbor’s VW is part of the 70’s movie “Pete and Tillie” starring Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett.
The concrete-in-the-convertible idea was also in the movie “Mystic Pizza” (I got dragged to see it, before you laugh.)
(Or maybe it was dead-fish-in-the-convertible?)
One of my favorites is the 1982 Mustang SS.
The story behind it was that the original 1982 Mustang GT was to be called a Super Stallion or SS. It goes on to say that Ford had already built and delivered cars and literature labeled as SS to dealerships. They then had to send a “factory rep” out to all of the dealers and change the tags and literature to GT because GM still held the mark on SS.
The rumor hasn’t been completely debunked yet but there is no official Ford documentation of an SS Mustang. There is a car on EBAY every so often that is claimed to be a “survivor” Mustang SS.
There was a 1981 Escort SS and on occasion you can find SS emblems with E0 or E1 (1980 or 1981) date codes but they all point to the Escort car line.
My best guess is that it was a dealer creation and the story got blown out of proportion..
I doubt SS is trademarkable. If it were, there would be no Taurus SEL, for example.
“Super Sport” you could probably get a trademark on.
Not my story and not something really worth pursuing. It’s a myth with one pic of a pre-production 82 Mustang with SS badges(oddly from a Motor Trend mag) and one car with no build tag to back up the claim.
You’re right on the letters though, Ford, Plymouth and Chevy all used RS at some point and no huge lawsuits were filed..
Oh man, that sparked a memory. I may even regret relating this, because there’s little chance I can verify this memory…
I don’t recall where I saw this, but at the time I was reading every car magazine available in the US. It could have been C&D or MT, but I swear I saw an article on the upcoming ‘Stang, it showed ‘preproduction’ photos. One clearly showed the right rear section of the hatch with Mustang SS badging. IIRC, the caption below the photo said something about preproduction graphics and copyright infringement with GM.
But that was 30 years ago, and I really don’t know how I would ever find that info. It could have been any one of a half dozen magazines I was reading at the time…
Definitely the 100 mpg carb. The myth is only helpful today in allowing me to quickly pinpoint any moron that may cross my path.
These cabrs are supposedly ‘hidden in GM’s basement’!
Along the lines of the Nova = No va, Rolls Royce supposedly had a lot of trouble selling the Silver Mist in German speaking speaking markets. Apparently mist is German for manure, but I defer to Paul Neidermeyer for an exact translation.
Yes, mist is manure/refuse. But there never was a RR Silver Mist.
There nearly was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Silver_Shadow
There’s a cite on this to an RR Owner’s Club. Not authoritative, but the logic of cloud to mist is good.
Good one. Hadn’t heard/read that before.
Thanks, that was what I was looking for.
this Nova=no va situation conjures up memories of the Mitsubishi Pajero which is sometype of jeep like off roader,. Except to us spanish speakers pajero translates to ‘je*k-*ff’
Too bad I haven’t seen any in my travels in South America –that would be funny.
Apparently to the French in Canada, La Crosse equates to that as well.
Oh, I forgot my second favorite: the immortal Arizona JATO Grenada. There are a thousand variations on this one (mostly date and car, but not location), and apparently the Arizona DOT still gets regular requests to confirm the story.
As a very young child, I was told that Rolls Royce locked the hoods of their cars, and that if they ever broke down, RR would send a mechanic anywhere in the world to fix it.
So many to choose from. But I’ll have to go with acetone in the gas for more power and better MPG.
I have run a small engine on Brakleen before, but it didn’t work very well.
I remember one about an old Swede in a parts store asking for a Viper. It turned out that he vanted a vindshield viper.
How about that you STILL need to change your oil every 3000 miles or 3 months, whichever comes first?
And premium gas is superior to plain old regular? Certainly the oil companies’ ads don’t help in this regard.
You still have to change the oil that much. Have you ever replaced a timing chain in a GM 3.6L V6? I wouln’t recommend it. GM eventually figured out that these timing chains were stretching because they set recommended oil change intervals way too long. Every time a Chevrolet Traverse came into the shop, it would have to be reprogrammed to show the oil change light much sooner.
As for premium vs. regular, premium doesn’t mean better, but it took me at least five minutes to convince my dad of that.
My Saturn burns so much oil, I replace it every 3000 miles.
Before sleeving my Vega engine, I went through a gallon (yes, four quarts) of oil every two weeks. Most of it dripped out the tailpipe.
“Hey, mister! Check the gas and fill up the oil, wontcha?”
My ’92 Nissan Laurel used 5 litres of oil per 1000km. I did 20,000km in it like that, it never missed a beat. Was an ex-driving school car imported from Japan, had been used 24/7 over there and had done around 400,000km when I bought it in 2002 (but the odometer had been wound back to 30,000km!). And the guy I sold it to managed another 20ish thousand km of 5L/1000km oil too before he forgot to check the diesel and fill the oil and blew it up. It was so economical though, the overall running costs were still better than the petrol version.
I’d have to say it is the myth that the Austin Allegro was banned from the Mersey tunnel in Liverpool because it could not be towed without breaking in half. This was based on a combination of two myths: first, the subframes would rust (this was the case on the previous ADO16, but the Allegro didn’t have subframes). The second part was that Allegros lacked structural rigidity and would distort the bodyshell if jacked incorrectly.
This was true to a point, but it was mainly because people at the time were not used to modern uniframe cars. Mechanics often were used to jacking cars on the rear bumpers, or near the rear towing mount with a trolley jack. On the Allegro, the panel behind the bumper was a thin valence, which connected to the rear wings. This could indeed distort the body around the rear window. However, you would have to be a real doofus to jack an unsupported and unreinforced rear valence on any car. BTW- Allegros had very high torisional rigidity due to the engineering necessary for the hydrolastic suspension. It is just that there is no structural support behind the front of the rear wheels due to the suspension being mounted on the heelboard.
Towing an Allegro would do no damage whatsoever, and they were never banned from the Mersey tunnel.
1. You must run your car for 5-10 minutes to warm it up on a cold day, even at 30-50 deg F, or else engine will fail.
2. Not driving a car for long time will ‘preserve it’. Thus, these old cars for sale with low mileage are really ‘good as new’. “I found a 1979 Nova with only 19,000 miles for $900, it shouldn’t break down for awhile”
Thanks, I wish more people understood those two
Over 30 years ago, I remember a guy I worked with telling me a story about someone who answered an ad for a 1953 Chevy for sale for $ 200. When the guy looked at the car, an elderly woman told him her son had been killed in Korea, and his car had sat since. He went into her garage to find an original Corvette in mint condition under a dust laden cover. Of course, he bought it.
Reminds me of another guy that used to make the most outlandish statements. When you would call him on it, he would provide “proof” from some adult magazine or other. Because the guy was totally nuts, the guys he worked with would agree with him. His nickname was Nosmo. Anyone from the Pittsburgh area will remember Nosmo King from TV. Cheers!
I know a true version of that Corvette story, because I’m part of it.
My earliest memory as a child (age 3) was dad bringing the dealership’s first Corvette home one day at lunchtime. He took it back to work and traded it off to Grabyak Chevrolet in Alexandria, PA for a couple of BelAir hardtops. He never liked Corvettes, always felt they were the single stupidist decision Chevrolet ever made.
Of course, I turn from a car crazy child into a car crazy adolescent. Fifteen years later I found that same car. In my neighborhood, about six blocks from the family home! Sitting in the garage, a complete mess, and rotting away (until that moment, I never thought fiberglass could rot).
The story behind it is that the son in that family had bought the car new, then kept it when he bought a ’59 Corvette from my dad. A couple of years later he was killed in the ’59. By the late 60’s, mom (widowed) still had junior’s ’53 and was doing nothing with it, just letting it rot in the garage.
For the next four years dad and I tried to talk the woman into selling us the car (dad still hated them, but his kid was serious into the AACA at that point). No luck. That was her son’s car, and it was staying at home. I even offered to come over and try to get it running, clean it up, at least stop the deterioration. No. Nobody touches that car, it’s her son’s.
A few years later mom died, and the car (I assume it was still there up to her death, by that point I was living in Erie, PA) disappeared. Never did find out what happened to it.
My brother bought a beautiful 1971 Dodge Charger in 1975 from a family who’s son had been killed in Viet Nam. The kid bought it not too long before he was drafted, never came back. The mother died a couple of years later, and the father, now a widower, wants to move to Florida. Everything must go. The Charger was put up for sale.
It truly sat in a garage in Northeast Ohio for four years. It had less than 10,000 miles on it when my brother brought it home. Of course, it needed a battery, tires, new brakes, car wash and a few other things. The car never moved in the four years it sat.
I knew a variation of that story. Back in the 60s, my car mentor Howard was into 30s Fords. There was a small town Ford dealer in Woodburn Indiana that went back to the days of the Model T. This dealer (might have been Augsburger Ford if I remember correctly) had a bunch of new old stock parts still in his inventory, and Howard used to go and comb through the shelves to find things.
In the back under a tarp was a 47 Lincoln V-12 sedan that the dealer had bought cheaply for his son, who was in Korea at the time (I think). The son was killed and the Lincoln just sat there. Howard convinced the old guy to let him take the car home and clean it up. The car was a really low mile car and cleaned up beautifully. Howard drove it back and the old man teared up and sold it to him.
Howard kept the car well into the 70s when he sold it to a collector. When I was 13 years old, it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, let alone ridden in. I was too young to understand the implications of the horrible flathead V-12, but Howard had the touch with those things, having owned several as a teen.
My dad bought a gorgeous 1960 Pontiac Bonneville hard-top coupe(!) in the early 80’s from a woman whose son, the original owner of the car, was killed in Vietnam. It had been sitting in their garage for eleven or twelve years and was completely original.
That car was a thing of goddamn beauty.
Ok, I’m dating myself here but who cares…in 1957 when I went to college in Des Moines, Iowa, I met a fellow license plate collector in Winterset, Iowa, who was also a car collector. He had a big storage building with license plates all over the walls and a collection of maybe thirty cars, mostly Model T’s and Model A’s. He had just bought a 1935 Ford 5-window coupe from the widow (or estate, I don’t remember) of the original owner. He had died, she didn’t drive, so it had been parked in the barn under a cover of some sort. It was in absolutely pristine condition, black with apple green stripe. It still had the mint-looking 1935 Iowa plates on it.
“Nosmo King”, from WTAE-TV/Pittsburgh’s “Paul Shannon’s Adventure Time”, was taken off a door somewhere in the building that read…
“No Smoking”.
That was back in the days when just about every TV station had a fair amount of locally-produced programming.
The “old Chevy that turned out to be a bargain Vette” story was turned into a hit Country song after the 9/11 attacks. Also works in the “dead person” angle, in the form of a Viet Nam soldier.
Factory sealed ball joints that require no lubrication for the life of the vehicle. I can personally vouch for the untruthfulness of this one.
Maybe a bit off topic, but I recall during the 1973 and 1979 fuel shortages, there were persistent rumors that just over the horizon so as to be invisible to everyone on shore, there were dozens of full oil tankers sitting anchored, waiting for fuel prices to rise even more.
Edit. I almost forgot about the car that, with either special mechanical devices or by a mystery catalyst, runs by burning water for combustion.
I think I recall seing a mass-forwarded email from just a few years ago with this same story . . .
They still do that with oil tankers. Look it up
1.) Isn’t there an old tale about the Arab who bought a car from [Israeli, Crusader, Imperialist, American Satan, etc.] and when it ran out of gas, he abandoned it as broken and sold it back to the seller, who repeated the trick with the next Sheik?
So many nasty stereotypes in that one!
2.) Really disappointed about the sugar/gas/engine death thing. It featured so prominently in the Edward Abbey “Monkey Wrench Gang” stories that turned me into a raging tree-hugger. But they used KARO SYRUP, does that make a difference?
Hayduke lives!
I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of sugar in a tank one way or the other, but I once had a customer whose kids put a whole package of cheap hotdogs in the gas filler and enough of them made it into the EVAP system and past the screen into the fuel pump cage I had to pull it and clean it all out because the car would only run intermittently. I guess gas eats hotdogs too.
My dad worked in Saudi Arabia for several years and brought back stories similar to this, where some minor component stopped working, so the car was abandoned on the spot and replaced with new… Don’t know if he was pulling my leg or not.
A few years ago (maybe 5), the Mythbusters went into the sugar/gas tank legend. As I recall, for reasonable amounts (perhaps a cup) no particular damage was done. I don’t know if they tried enough to screw up the fuel lines.
OTOH, they tried bleach on a hooptie V8. Not pretty. The chlorine would do a fair number on anything aluminum. In a previous life, I had a job that required me to worry about chlorine corroding aluminum–the chlorine doesn’t get used up until or unless it’s flushed away.
The US Army in conjunction with the CIA did a study on improvised vehicle disabling. They found it was pretty hard to find readily available stuff to permanently and quickly disable a vehicle. I have the documents somewhere but don’t ask me to dig them up.
I should mention that someone put something in my diesel tank one time that did a number on the filters and lines. It looked like flour though.
My Dad ran the vocational wing of our high school, and someone dumped a handful of sand in the master cylinder of our Vega once (we also had nails put in all four tires, and the transmission drain plug removed in the parking lot… Dad was pretty strict, which didn’t “play well” with some students).
It took a while, but one day when leaving after school, I went to hit the brakes and the pedal went to the floor. Had to replace the m/c.
Maybe sugar wouldn’t grenade the engine, but back around 1960, somebody dumped a bag of sugar into the gas tank of Mark Lowey’s customized 54 Ford. I spent quite a while watching Mark clean out the carburetor of his car while parked in front of our house, because that was where it had stopped running due to the clogged carb.
In the early days of grey market Japanese car imports to New Zealand, Mr Tashima is transferred here to work in a joint venture. He needs a car quickly so he answers an ad for a Corolla. To his amazement, he finds it’s his old car. The car he sold last year in Japan has been imported as a used Japanese import. He buys it anyway because now it has 100,000 less km on it!
Lol, loving it! (Though as in my other comment further up the page, one of my previous Laurels had 370,000km wiped off its odometer when it showed up here…)
When the Jaguar E-Type was launched in the UK, the cars always had the front registration plate “painted ” onto the nose, just above the air intake. The rumour quickly spread that if you used a regular flat plate on the front it took more than 10 mph off the maximum speed, knocking it back to only 138 mph or so, instead of 150. The reality which Autocar revealed years later was that the launch car that they had road-tested at 150+ had a rather special motor……
Heard so many they don’t even stand out.
My favorite, of course, is that 100-mpg carb. Guy invented it in his garage; and then GM bought it up, locked up the drawings, and had the guy snuffed so he’d never tell anyone else.
And then, of course, GM re-designs their entire auto fleet with FWD and computer-controlled engines to meet CAFE standards, at a cost of billions…why? Probably because they don’t want to admit that they had the 100-mpg carb.
Makes a lot of sense – doesn’t it.
Sugar in the gas…I heard a Vietnam vet tell me that; and it was only many years later that it hit me: something WATER soluble won’t necessarily dissolve in OTHER liquids. Just as some plastics holds water but turns to goo with gasoline, so, too, will sugar or salt dissolve in water…but remain a grainy solid in a tank of gasoline.
Favorite CURRENT myth: Rotating tires on a FWD car, saves money. BULL! Rear tires on a front-drive vehicle can last the life of the car, or until dry-rot kills the sidewalls. Front tires, will show wear more quickly – allowing poor alignment or other problems to show. Yeah, you might get a little more all-around life with rotated tires. ALSO, you’ll pay the tire guy to jack up the car, move them around, balance them, probably, because they’ll likely need it after being monkeyed with…and then, have him over-torque the lug nuts. Who needs it? Four tire rotations, can pay for a tire. And what about your own time?
JPT,
There is no question that FWD cars wear out the front tires faster. If you want to maximize your tire life, it needs to be done. Now, if you’re like a lot of people and like replacing two tires at a time, thus having two new tires on one axle and two half-worn-out tires on the other (which can be problematic due to differing traction and hydroplaning resistance between the two ends of the car), then so be it.
If you buy tires from a full-service store, lifetime rotation is free in most cases. I rotate my own, as I like to do a brake and undercarriage inspection anyways every so often (and don’t like the improper use of the impact guns at some tire stores which tends to strip out the lug nuts as you have mentioned).
I just rotated the tires on my MIL’s car for the first time at 16K miles (much longer than recommended, but I go by actual treadwear measurements at three places across the tire) which should work out just fine. Probably only 2-3 other rotations for the life of these tires over the next several years, no big deal. At one of the rotations, the brakes will be due anyways so I’ll rotate while I’m working on the brakes.
So I really don’t see any myth in this, having maintained the tires on about 13 FWD cars (many of which were purchased, repaired and then given to various family members) over the past 18 years.
Agreed. The tires wear at different rates.
But I like buying two tires better than four; and I do NOT like paying money to move tires around.
The rear tires wear scarcely at all, unless there’s alignment on the rear and it’s out. So…the front tires go, put new tires on it. Or, conversely, put the rear tires on the front, and new tires on the rear; and then replace the front tires again when they wear out completely.
So long as there’s adequate tread on all four corners, and so long as one drives prudently on wet roads, hydroplaning is a low risk. Tire-tread-wear indicators are a blessing that way, if someone cannot judge.
I long have suspected it to be a myth that you get better gas mileage at 55 MPH verse 65 mph… or even better at 70
No myth. It’s absolutely true.
Not hard to understand, either. It’s the results of basic laws of physics, that to double speed, you quadruple the power necessary to maintain speed against resisting forces, as well as quadrupling the force needed to stop.
Now, the question is: what is your TIME worth? On a longer trip, the difference between 55 and 75 mph is considerable. On a trip between, say, New York and Dallas, it could actually add up to almost a full day. With an otherwise fuel-efficient car, the cost isn’t prohibitive.
It is handy to keep in mind, though, if you get caught short of gasoline some night…just ease it down to fifty, and watch your mileage jump. I have been there; I have done that.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the generalization to “drive like there’s an egg between foot and accelerator pedal.”
Yes on an automatic it keeps RPM down for lower engine speeds, friction loss, and less pumping loss. Probably on most auto transmission vehicles it is a key to better mileage rather than wringing it up to 4K RPM or more on each acceleration.
But engine efficiency is highest when cylinder filling is better and just short of the point that power enrichment kicks in (open loop on modern engines). On some of the older Mobil economy runs, manual trans vehicles were accelerated quite briskly to take into account this higher efficiency. They were relatively short shifted and not wound out.
In my opinion keeping your foot off the brakes should be the more operative one size fits all tip on fuel economy for non hybrid vehciles.
The factory 427 Mustang!
No, but the Cougar GT-E did.
My favorite ‘musclecar that never was’ is the ’68-’71 440-4bbl Plymouth Roadrunner. There are actually a few logical reasons for the myth. For starters, the 440-6bbl was available in the RR from 1969-1971. Undoubtedly, a few were converted to a single 4-bbl carburator.
Then, in 1972, while the GTX was discontinued as a separate model, a 440 4bbl did become available in the RR and it was labeled as a ‘Roadrunner/GTX’.
There were also the minute exterior differences between the GTX (which did come with a 440 4-bbl engine) and Roadrunner. It wouldn’t take much for a dealer to simply replace the stock Roadrunner engine with a 440 (or even just the engine call-outs with ones that said ‘440’).
Finally, the 1970 Superbird (which also came standard with a 440 4-bbl) sold so poorly that there may have been a few dealers who were so desperate that they had the nose and rear spoiler changed/removed to make a standard Roadrunner so they could get rid of them. It wasn’t even an option in Maryland where a Superbird could not be sold with the factory nose cone because the Maryland DOT would not classify it as a bumper (which it really wasn’t).
I thought it was the oil companies that paid off the inventor(s) of the 100 mpg carbs…
I actually read an article in Road & Track sometime in the 70’s when the arab states were flush with oil money; they were buying exotic cars. Due to the virtual non-existance of mechanics, if the vehicles broke down they were simply left on the side of the road.
I heard the story about the suicide Corvette when I was a sophmore in high school way back in ’62. The story went that some guy put a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains all over the interior of the car. It was such a mess it was sold for $300.
Supposed news story of the “Persian” immigrant traveling the long boring Texas freeway who set the cruise control and ambled to the rear of the van to make sandwich, watch TV, take nap etc.
Stories varied.
Outcomes did also along with passengers present or not.
Mid 70s tale if I recall.
May be true.
May be not.
Most folks knew what self-proclaimed “Persian” moniker meant.
Most didn’t care.