The Myth behind the Myth Makers

During my college days at the University of Texas at Austin, my roommate and I would spend long hours holding slots in gas lines at our local service station during one of the many fuel crisis during the 1970’s.  In those days, we used to trade stories of a myth we overheard that went something like this: ‘there was a man from West Texas (in the East people heard he was a blacksmith from Maine and out West – a Canadian inventor…) who built a device that went on a Chrysler New Yorker that allowed it to get ninety miles per gallon of gasoline.’  The myth described a test drive from El Paso to Midland and back on a “thimble” of gas. The worse the energy crisis, the higher the claimed success for the invention. But in all versions of the myth, the government or GM or Chrysler came in, bought the car and it has never been seen since. And in most versions of the myth, the inventors disappeared. Simply vanished.

One afternoon in early spring 2009, my roommate, then an Intellectual Properties lawyer in Hollywood, called me and said, “I may have a story for you. Interested?”  I am a writer. I am always interested in a good story. His was based on an interview with a man who knew of three engineers in New Mexico who had actually been involved in the invention of the device around which the myth grew. “Remember that myth we always used to drag up at the gas station back in Austin?”  I said I did recall it “Well, it might have some truth to it.”

Yes.  I was interested.  We exchanged paperwork, giving me the rights to the book and he got the rights to the movie (if one was going to be made) and from there I went to work researching the story behind the myth.
Everywhere I turned, I ran into a dead end. Months and months of nothing; including interviews with the man from whom my roommate had originally heard the story, Then, as if by luck, I received a call from the son of one of the men who claimed he knew something about his father’s work. Did he want to meet me? Answer, again…yes. (How did he find me? How did he know I was researching this very idea?)

So I flew to El Paso and drove up to Alamogordo, New Mexico and had coffee with a guy who claimed his father and two friends were the inventors of the devise from which the myth grew. Problem was, before he would talk, he held his hand out for cash. No money – no story.

I told him I was just beginning to investigate the story and if he had something, I would need to tell my partners in California, who were funding the story’s development. And they would need some facts – something substantial in order to dig into their pocketbooks. I told him, “Think of it as kicking the tires of a new car. Just doing a short test drive.  See what it’s got – see what you’ve got. If there’s a bit of a story, we’ll see about money.”
There were three guys involved from what I heard that day. His father, a man who became the character called Paul Austin and the mysterious friend of his father’s we call Krenshaw in the book. So far so good. I asked about each. He said Austin, like his father, was dead. He didn’t know about Krenshaw’s whereabouts. But he did know that the car had existed. He, as a small boy, remembered seeing it in their garage in New Mexico and he even remembered the day the Army soldiers came from El Paso with a big truck and hauled it away. I do not remember finishing my coffee that day.  I was on the phone to the money people in California.

We had a story. He got his money.

Now you get to share in what we found. How much of it is fact and how much of it is myth…well you will have to decide. Were these guys con men or truly breakthrough scientist who stumbled upon a great discovery – a discovery that some powers somewhere wanted…and still want…to keep secret.
The more I researched The Myth Makers, the more I felt as if I was the one being conned. But the only question I knew to ask was – who is doing the conning? Who is leading the dance? I still do not know. That is why I turned the story into a novel. There was too much fiction surrounding the myth for it to be called fact, but I must say, there are far too many facts to simply be fiction, as well.
I have traveled all across America. And everywhere I go there is always someone who has heard the myth. Someone who has been told about the car that got untold gas mileage, taken away by the government and never seen again.

It seems as if that part of the story, is not a very well kept secret.