Incredible VW Gas Mileage (Apocryphal Prank)

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/smiley_anders/article_8e29fbba-b7a3-11e9-8fea-7bbea545abc6.html

The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA]

6 August 2019

Smiley: Tale of the Magic Beetle

Mike Berry, of New Iberia, adds to our VW Beetle lore: “I was going through flight school in Pensacola in the ‘60s and the following story was related to me by a fellow student. In college, one of his fraternity brothers owned a Beetle and was constantly bragging about its wonderful mileage. Tiring of the constant boasting, the guys bought a small gasoline can, and would steal out at night and add a little bit of gas to the VW’s tank. The unsuspecting owner began to achieve truly spectacular gas mileage, and was insufferable. When the mileage exceeded 100 miles the gallon, the proud owner wrote to Volkswagen extolling the virtues of his miraculous Beetle. The engineers at VW decided to investigate. They came to town and offered the owner a loaner while they ran a complete set of diagnostics on the ‘magic’ car. They quickly decided it was no better than any other Beetle. The fraternity brothers, thereafter, began to periodically siphon a little bit of gas out of the car’s tank, resulting in truly horrible gas mileage. The owner was convinced that the VW people had stolen his engine and replaced it with some sort of factory reject. He probably holds a grudge to this day.”

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/smiley_anders/article_694e3680-b85c-11e9-a674-af115afa3a1d.html

The Advocate [Baton Rouge]

7 August 2019

Smiley: 'And in this corner, wearing...'

[…] Ronnie Stutes, of Baton Rouge, this column's unpaid fact checker, says our Wednesday story about the guys who tinkered with their buddy's VW Beetle, adding or removing gasoline to affect the mileage, may be a great story, but it's an often-told "urban legend." It shows up as one of the "Ten Best Automotive Practical Jokes" on the Hagerty automotive website, with the neighbor of a guy named Carl doing the dirty deed.

H. Allen Smith, The Compleat Practical Joker (William Morrow & Co., 1980), 297-8.

Alan King tells of a harmless but hilarious prank which he and a friend played on a neighbor who had just purchased a new Volkswagen. It involved filling the Volkswagen's gas tank with gas each night, making the owner believe he was getting hundreds of miles to the gallon. Then, after a period of time and discussions with the dealer, whom King and his friend convinced that the owner was a bit flaky and needed humoring, they began siphoning gas out of the tank each night until the owner could but drive a few blocks before running out of gas.

Cats Used to Test Car Sealing – Prison Ghosts (India) – Thieves Plait Horse Manes (UK)

Bob Lutz, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011.

There’s an old, presumably apocryphal tale about body integrity, good body sealing, and absence of unsightly gaps around the hood, trunk, and doors. It goes like this: To test for the car’s airtightness, Toyota engineers would leave a cat in the car in the evening. The next morning, if the cat was active and chipper, there was obviously too much air entering the car somewhere. But if the cat was limp, listless, or near dead, this indicated a tightly built car. Hearing of this cat test, a GM assembly plant also placed a feline in the just-assembled car, shut all the vents and doors, and awaited the morning. But, when the engineers came back to check the next day, the cat was gone!

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https://www.hindustantimes.com/patna/4-incidents-of-mob-attacks-on-child-lifters-in-a-day/story-D9n8iGmNJb1rMRfoSauvNN.html

Hindustan Times

3 August 2019

4 incidents of mob attacks on ‘child lifters’ in a day

Four people were attacked by mobs [in Patna] on suspicion of being child kidnappers, in separate incidents across the state capital on Friday. […] “We have not come across any social media messages. But the rumour about child kidnappers is spreading by word of mouth. We are conducting awareness drives (against rumours),” said an official in the state police headquarters. […]

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https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/tihar-jail-ghost-spook-many-of-its-inmates-1576676-2019-08-03

India Today

3 August 2019

Tihar in fear as 'ghosts' spook many of its inmates

Officials at India's largest complex of prisons are having sleepless nights these days as they face an unusually difficult challenge - convincing a section of inmates that there are no ghosts in this world! Every day, some Tihar inmates claim encountering spirits, Mail Today has learnt from multiple reliable sources. "Some say they are slapped for doing something that's bad. Others feel haunted by late-night wails. When they are able to sleep, they claim to have common, eerie nightmares," said an official. […]

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https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/plaiting-not-marker-theft-police-force-dispel-urban-myth-693320

Horse & Hound [UK]

4 August 2019

Plaiting is not a marker for theft: police force dispel ‘urban myth’

[…] The West Yorkshire Police wildlife and rural crime unit issued a statement after a call on 27 July from an owner who found her horse with a plait in its mane, believing it had been marked for theft. “Over the last few years we have done a lot of research into this with many forces. There are no proven links between plaiting and horse theft,” said the statement. Wildlife crime officer and Horsewatch co-ordinator Shaun Taylor […] said the force receives around one call per month about horse plaiting. “Nine years ago we were getting three or four calls a week reporting plaits so we seem to be getting the message out there but we need to keep putting it out there,” he said.

An Unstealable Car

Robert Wolf, “Robert Wolf’s Corner,” Other Scenes (New York City), vol. 3, no. 17, December 1969, p. 5. Note: issue wrongly stated as no. 16. “A friend of a friend had an old rattletrap of a car that he wouldn’t, out of altruism, palm off even on a used car dealer. The car had a reasonable amount of insurance on it, so he drove it up to Spanish Harlem, parked it near a corner where lots of kids hang out, left the keys in the ignition, left the doors unlocked, left the windows rolled down and walked away. Three days later he looked up the address of the police precinct nearest that corner, took a taxi to the corner and was about to walk to the precinct house to tell his sad tale, when, forsooth, the car was still there. He went closer for a look. Someone had rolled up the windows and tucked the keys above the sun visor.”