Tom Ogle Fact or Fiction
Have you ever heard of Tom Ogle from El Paso, Texas? Most people haven't. Have you ever heard of his 351ci Ford motor from the mid-70s getting over 100 miles to a gallon? Most people haven't heard about that either. Tom Ogle designed and built the only one that has ever existed. The stories vary, the model of car, the amount of fuel he used, even his age. It makes it very hard to believe.
Tom Ogle lived in El Paso, Texas and was a young inventor. He took a Ford with a 351ci engine to Pecks Automotive Service in El Paso to begin the transformation from a carbureted system to an enclosed, carburetor-less, vapor-burning wonder machine that got over 100 miles to the gallon of gasoline. Hard to believe? There are those who believe it was nothing more than a hoax. According to experts who investigated his system and inspected the vehicle, it was real. Tom Ogle was even granted a patent (#4,177,779)on his invention.
According to his obituary, Tom Ogle died in 1981, at the age of 26, from an overdose of alcohol and Darvon. Some claim it was a well planned murder by either the automakers of the time or the oil companies that didn't want his fuel-saving system to become public knowledge whereby cutting drastically into their profits. There are claims of an "unknown" silent partner who died mysteriously in his shop shortly before Tom Ogle died. Seems like someone should know who he was if they know how he died.
Tom Ogle was allegedly deeply in debt from a gambling habit. His mother admitted that his alcohol and drug use was a way of life for her son. He had a prior arrest record in El Paso for firearms and reckless driving. This is the profile of a troubled young man, but that was also said of Albert Einstein.
It is claimed in the report, supposedly written by a reporter from the Times, that "the 34-year old inventor climbed into his 1979 Ford Galaxy" in 1977. H-mm. Granted it is 31 years later, but these newspaper clippings are in the library in El Paso.
It is definitely a possibility, if he did invent this system, that he was murdered. If someone had really invented a way for a 351ci engine to go over 100 miles to a gallon as some claim Tom Ogle did in 1977, most of us can agree that either the General Motors Corporation, who claim to have a similar patent since 1972!, or members of one of the major oil conglomerates surely would not have wanted the rest of us to know about it. Murder? Accidental suicide? Suicide out of fear of worse than death? No one knows for sure.
Tom Ogle and his ogle-mobile died in 1981. We will probably never know what happened. Was it a truly remarkable invention that was silenced? Or just a young man, hooked on alcohol, drugs, and gambling trying to swindle money to pay his outrageous debts? What do you think?
