Pogue carburetor patent design. Or is it?
Though we gearheads are enlightened animals, able to rationally troubleshoot the squeaks, groans, misfires, and other glitches in the machines we operate, we’re just as prone as anybody else to the magical thinking behind your common conspiracy theory.
After all, the mechanics of an automobile – or, more often, of the culture around automobiles – can sometimes prove too complex for us to fully comprehend, so we rely on bits of gleaned information combined with our own interpretations (which can rely on imagination just as much as on deductive reasoning) to form an explanation. That stew proves an excellent brew for conspiratorial thinking to develop out of, so it’s little wonder car culture has a number of conspiracy theories ready to explain away mysteries or to act as wish fulfillment.
Sometimes, the theories try to fill in the blanks or inconsistencies left in the historical record. Sometimes they represent a willful suspension of trust in authorities and official narratives. Sometimes they merely express a refusal to believe that something mundane (such as improper stocks and securities transactions) can have an effect on something fantastic (such as the pending introduction of a car of tomorrow).
Perhaps the most persistent automotive conspiracy theory has to do with the Pogue carburetor and the various alleged attempts to suppress the 200 MPG results that it promised. Roy Ames told the story of the Pogue and many other fuel-saving devices – some of them outright frauds – in a pair of stories for Special Interest Autos back in 1981, but long story short, Charles Nelson Pogue likely was no con man.
Instead, Pogue appeared to earnestly believe that the key to greater fuel economy in an automobile engine lay within the carburetor – specifically with perfecting the carburetor’s atomization of fuel. He worked on his carburetor for nearly 20 years, obtained multiple patents during the 1920s and 1930s, and didn’t appear out to make a quick buck from unsuspecting investors. In fact, he and his financer, W.J. Holmes, reportedly turned down many offers to invest in the Pogue carburetor.
But then in 1936, after a break-in at Pogue’s workshop and a second financer stepped in, the story starts to break down and rumors start to step in. Maybe it was the Detroit car companies that did Pogue in, or maybe it was the oil companies, certain that Pogue’s invention – nearing perfection and soon to his the market – would put them out of business, right? Pogue couldn’t have spent all that time engineering a carburetor that failed to live up to its much-hyped promise, could he? Of course he couldn’t have made poor business decisions or had a falling out with his financers. His undoing was all the doing of a nefarious and shadowy cabal, had to have been.
So, aside from the story of Mr. Pogue, what auto-related conspiracy theories are you fond of? Or, alternately, what automotive conspiracy theories are you fond of debunking?
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