Flying Wombats & Phantom Corsairs Lies the Auto Industry Sells Us

Posted On November 6, 2013

The first time I heard talk about suppressed inventions and technology was over 40 years ago….my counter-culture friends told about how there’d been a carburetor developed that got 75 MPG but it had been bought out by Big Oil so we’d all have to keep on driving gas guzzling cars..
There were other tales of suppressed inventions, but that one really sticks in my mind, especially now with our current energy crisis and gas at 5 or 6 bucks a gallon.
 
And now, 40 years later, the whole world is learning that not only did that carburetor exist…but that thousands of incredible inventions, technologies and medicines have been suppressed over the past 100 years that could have enabled us all to be living in an entirely different reality right now.
 

But back to cars! A few weeks back I stumbled across an old classic movie on Youtube titled “The Young in Heart.”
 

This delightful 1938 comedy is about a family of professional con artists working a scam on the French Riviera. The Carletons consist of a father, called “Sahib” because of a part he had once in a play and the mother is calleed “Marmy”
The drop dead handsome son is Richard, played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (and he really was a dish!) and the daughter is named George-Anne.
Richard is just about to cement the family’s future fortunes by marrying an heiress he has cynically wooed and won on the Riviera..
Unfortunately these grand plans are wrecked when the Sahib lets his larcenous nature get the better of him. Although his son is about to marry a girl with 3 million dollars, the Sahib just can’t resist cheating her father in a card game and is caught out.
 

Not only is the wedding definitely called off, the entire family is promptly tossed out of the Riviera by the police.
On the train back to London George-Anne befriends an elderly lady named Miss Fortune. This lady buys them all a meal, and they learn that she’s rich and without a family. The Carletons latch onto her with the idea that she’ll take them in and make them her heirs if they treat her nicely.
 

This plan actually works and the family ends up living in Miss Fortune’s lavish mansion in London. However, her lawyer is deeply suspicious of this situation. The Sahib and Richard, neither of whom has ever held a real job in their lives, begin to leave the mansion every day to kill time while they pretend to look for jobs. They hope to keep up the ruse that they are actually the respectable family Miss Fortune has taken them for, and to keep that pesky lawyer off their backs!
 

Through no fault or real effort of his own, the Sahib gets a job selling cars at a Flying Wombat Auto Dealership. Much to his own surprise, he enjoys his new job and is a terrific salesman and in one very witty scene of social satire is eventually given the position of company sales manager by a CEO who has found out who he really is…a con man! Naturally he would make the perfect sales manager….
 

The movie was a hoot, and it had a heart. The family that scammed together ultimately redeem themselves, and true love blossoms for all by the end of the flick.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but what about those Flying Wombats? This was seriously one of the most beautiful and elegant car designs I had ever seen….but did it really exist?
 

As it turns out the Flying Wombat was an actual proto-type concept car called the Phantom Corsair, designed by Rust Heinz in 1938.
Rust was the son of HJ Heinz the ketchup magnate, and he dreamed of building his own car. He set up an industrial design studio, and the Phantom Corsair was born.
 

One of the most futuristic cars ever designed, the body panels were made of hand beaten aluminum. There were no tacky door handles to interrupt the sleek aerodynamics of the car, the doors were opened with electric push buttons.
The instrument panel was way ahead of its time too, containing gauges for everything including a compass and an altimeter in case one found one’s self airborne, I suppose! There was even a console above the safety glass windshield that told the driver when a door was ajar or the lights or radio were left on.
 

The car was designed to carry 6 passengers in a unique style….with room for 4 people in the front seat, with one passenger seated to the left of the driver, and 2 passengers in back. That rear seat was rather cramped, incidentally, because Rust incorporated a fancy beverage station and liquor cabinet back there.
 

The Phantom Corsair never made it into production. It was to have a price tag of $12,500 which was an enormous sum, equivalent to about $200,000 today, so people weren’t exactly lining up to place orders for this car.
And then Rust was killed in an auto accident in 1939 at the tender age of 25. His prototype Phantom Corsair was the only one that was ever built. It’s on display at the National Auto Museum in Reno, Nevada.
 

This car may not have been the most practical vehicle ever designed, but it was beautiful and innovative. And it was designed by one young man with a vision….it seems like modern cars are all cut out of the same hum-drum mould.
The Phantom Corsair was designed for flash and style, certainly not economy….but it was an example of one man’s dream come true.
 

Thirty years before Rust Heinz developed his fantastic concept car, Henry Ford rolled out the first Model T automobile in 1908. This was the first car that was affordable for middle class families, and it opened up a whole new world of travel and transportation to the public.
 

Ford said: “I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”
 

Ford made good on this promise and the Model T was such a success that it continued to be made until 1927. And here’s the kicker…the 1908 Ford Model T got 25 miles per gallon of gas.
The average fuel consumption of cars today, in 2013, one hundred and five years after Ford introduced the Model T, is a mere 24.5 MPG. A couple of years ago average fuel consumption was only 23 MPG… and auto manufacturers acted like it was a big deal when they were able to increase gas mileage by a measly mile and a half per gallon!
 

Really….they were all congratulated and got big write-ups and everything for this amazing technological advancement! Wow! The oil and auto executives must be laughing themselves sick over this incredible bamboozle.
 

Look at the fantastic advances in technology we’ve made in just the past 5 years. The joke that your smart phone or computer is out of date before you even buy it is completely true…. The technology grows that fast.
So, why the hell are we still driving gas guzzling hogs for cars? Oh sure, there are economical vehicles…but the industry average for fuel consumption is still lower than the mileage that was achieved by Henry Ford’s Model T.
 

This is just another example of how we’ve been lied to and made the complete dupes of the criminal corporations that are ruling our world.
We are currently undergoing an energy crisis, and the government of New Brunswick wants to frack and run a pipeline because we need more fossil fuel, they say…
 

The technology exists for cars to be getting better fuel economy, and has existed for many years. Check out the 261 MPG Volkswagen XL1. This is a diesel hybrid, with a light weight composite body. It debuted earlier this year in Geneva, and is not a concept car. However, the company plans to make only 250 of these autos with a price tag of over $100,000.
 

But….even if it’s not within our budgets today, the fact that this car is actually in production means that the technology is there… and we’ll see more cars developed that get the true fuel economy that in fact exists today, not the cars greedy oil companies want us to buy!