A Way Out Of A National Addiction

I’m no inventor.

But I know just enough about inventions to be dangerous.

Having admitted the Above, I now skate onto Thin Ice to offer a Little Suggestion which could go a Very Long Way in leaving out wallets a bit thicker, making our cars & trucks run more efficiently, protecting our farmlands for the growth of food, and – ultimately – breaking our National Addiction to Imported Foreign Oil.

But first: allow me to share a true story with you, one which might add some background to my Little Suggestion.

Here ‘Tis…

Several years ago, back when I was in the news business, I met a guy, whose name escapes me ,who drove a mid-Sized Buick, who invented and patented a new type of carburetor.

It looked like a flying saucer and was screwed onto the valve cover on the Buick’s engine just below the old-fashioned, round, air filter manifold.

He asserted his invention boosted gas mileage to over 70 miles per gallon. Back then, one must recall, one would Kiss one’s car’s Tail Pipe (excluding the cheap Japanese Imports, or course) if one’s Chevy or Buick or Ford or Chrysler yielded 20 mpg.  Back then, the average mileage was about 16 mpg.

I was somewhat skeptical about this guy's claim at first. But there were certain forces at work in the Economy then, ones that took more and more cash out of my pocket in order to satisfy the appetites of Big Oil, the Spot Market, and OPEC.

Please recall that one paid the outrageous price of $1.75 per gallon at the Gas Pump back in those days – outrageous!

Anyway, I set my doubts aside and set a modest set of terms & conditions for a newspaper story that I would write about this invention: he would demonstrate the mileage claim by filling the gas tank in New London, CT. From there, we would drive to Hyannis, MA for lunch. We would then return to the same gas station in New London, filler’ up and I would record the number of gallons it took to bring the car’s gas tank back to full capacity.

He had no problem with my stipulation, so we drove The Scenic Route over to Cape Cod, enjoyed a wonderful Bowl of Clam Chowder at a restaurant by the Hyannis Airport, and returned to New London after spending about six hours together debating the Fortunes, or Lack Thereof, of the Boston Red Sox.

The odometer reading stated that we had traveled 232.7 miles.

At the average-for-the-time 16 mpg rate, the standard auto should have burned about 14/5 gallons of fuel at a cost of $25.37 at the pump. When we filled this guy’s Buick, it took 3.1 gallons of gasoline at a pump cost of $4.25!

That’s 77 miles per gallon, coming from an old Buick, Friends…

I called the guy on the phone about a week later, to see if he had made any progress with selling the rights to his carburetor patent to one of the three major car manufacturers. He informed me that he had, indeed, heard from a Large Company, whose name he could not disclose.

He had been presented with a Licensing Agreement in which he would be paid an undisclosed Royalty Fee for every carburetor the Large Company manufactured.

He was also tendered an Up-Front, Good-Faith Cash Payment Offer in an amount he could not, under the terms of the agreement, divulge to any other party such as me.

Given the skimpiness of this information, it was impossible for me to write any substantive follow-up to my initial story.

As a consequence, I prepped a three-paragraph Brief for the Business Page and let it all go at that.

I never heard from, or of, the inventor again until, about a year later, a former colleague of mine mentioned that he had overheard something about a guy who raked in a mid-five-figure sum for an invention he perfected: had something to do with a new kind of carburetor.

Whoever or Whatever bought the invention did absolutely nothing to bring the device to the marketplace.

Gettting back to my Little Suggestion …

The time has arrived for the Automakers to re-visit their Patent Files and dig out all of those Gas-Saving, Filed-Away Inventions which – for one reason or another – never made it under the Hood of our vehicles.

The carmakers can begin by digging out the carburetor drawings.

What with the Mess in the Levant, complicated by any number of other Instabilities in the Mideast, coupled with the Japanese Reactor Melt-Downs, and fueled by domestic and world-wide oil demands this summer, the price of gasoline could reach $5 per gallon at the pump.

The consequences of all-of-the-above will most certainly cripple our fragile economic recovery and lead to even louder and more strident cries, from the Usual Suspects, about extending offshore drilling and the need for even more oil exploration and drilling in pristine, ecologically-sensitive places.

Then, there is the very serious matter of converting our fertile Crop Lands into high corn/soy production areas in order to meet emerging demand for the manufacture of Ethanol. The retail price for beef, pork and chicken is already skyrocketing due to the fact that grain crops are now being hoarded & hogged for the Ethanol market.

I have no problem with farmers earning their just keep, so long as they can sell me food and bread for the table whereby I do not have to secure a Second Mortgage just to pay for what I eat. Have you, too, noticed food prices inching upward at the Grocery Store lately?

What a Total Mess…

And a great starting point to solving this Total Mess may rest with the fact that the design for a very efficient carburetor is just sitting there, forlorn and forgotten, rotting away in some File Cabinet in Michigan.

Maybe it’s in the same file cabinet with plans for the Flux Capacitor.