Dear Tom and Ray - I recently purchased a 1962 Chevy Biscayne. The gas tank was leaking and couldn't be patched, so I took it out. When I removed the tank, it sounded like marbles were rolling around in there! I tipped it upside-down, and three little coin-size weights fell out. There must be six or seven more in there. I'm enclosing one of them with my letter for your inspection. Do you think that for some bizarre reason the manufacturer put them in fuel tanks back then? If so, why? - Ed
TOM: What you've got here, Ed, are authentic octane-boosting, gas-mileage-increasing magic pellets. I haven't seen these in years!
RAY: These were sold in the backs of magazines and on bubble-gum wrappers. They promised to boost performance and mileage if you threw them in your tank. I'm sure the description had some mumbo-jumbo about metal hydride ionization or some such thing, and 10 of them probably sold for $8.95. Snake-oil remedies such as this have been sold for centuries.
TOM: In fact, my brother bought these very same pellets back in 1980. Only the ones he bought were supposed to make his hair grow!
RAY: There's no need to worry, Ed. I can personally guarantee you that these pellets did absolutely no damage to your Chevy Biscayne over the years. Just as I can guarantee you that they did absolutely no good, either.
Dear Tom and Ray - Back 30 years ago, the average V8 had 300-horsepower ratings.
My '68 AMC Javelin, which had a "small" V8, had 280 horsepower. In the '90s, cars with anything over 200 hp are considered high-performance. 200 hp back in the '60s would be considered puny. Have the specifications changed, or is there some other explanation for this? - Larry
RAY: Gee, Larry. You wouldn't think 200 horses was nothin' if you were the stable boy and had to clean up after them!
TOM: Actually, it's a good question, Larry. Horsepower is horsepower. And you're right that cars today do have less of it. But they don't need as much.
RAY: Because they weigh so much less, "performance" cars of today are just as fast as the cars you romanticize, even though they have less horsepower.
TOM: The main factor in acceleration is the "power to weight" ratio. Lets say your '68 AMC Javelin had 280 horsepower and weighed 4,200 pounds. That would mean there was one horsepower for every 15 pounds of car.
RAY: Now take the 1996 Nissan 300ZX. The least powerful engine in that car - the six-cylinder, non-turbo - produces 220 horsepower in a car that weighs about 3,300 pounds. That means the 300ZX has one horsepower for every - guess what? - 15 pounds of car!
TOM: If the car weighs less, it doesn't need as much power to make it go fast. And most cars today weigh between 2,000 and 3,500 pounds; whereas in the '60s, the average weight was probably between 3,500 and 5,000 pounds. So today, through the wonders of modern technology and weight reduction, idiots like my brother can go fast enough to kill themselves using smaller, lighter, cleaner, more efficient engines that produce less horsepower.
RAY: This is what we call "progress," Larry.