“My car refuses to start…"

[kschauweker]

“My car refuses to start… only when I buy vanilla ice cream.”
In 1978, General Motors’ Pontiac division received one of the most bizarre customer letters ever written.
"You’ll probably think I’m crazy — but I promise I’m not. My family loves ice cream, and every evening the kids pick a flavor. I drive to the store to get it. I recently bought a new Pontiac. And every time I buy vanilla ice cream, the car won’t start.
If I buy chocolate, strawberry, or any other flavor — no problem.
But vanilla? It just won’t start."
At first, the support team chuckled — who wouldn’t? But protocol required that they investigate… so they sent an engineer.
To their surprise, the owner was a well-spoken, rational, and educated man. No sign of delusion. Together, they drove to the store. Bought vanilla.
And yes — the Pontiac wouldn’t start.
They repeated the experiment over several nights.

Chocolate — starts.

Strawberry — starts.

Vanilla — nothing.
Now the engineer was curious. He ruled out weather, temperature, fuel type, driving style…
And then he discovered the truth.
It wasn’t about the vanilla. It was about the timing.
Vanilla — the most popular flavor — was stocked in a freezer near the front of the store. The other flavors were kept deeper inside.
Buying vanilla took less time.

That meant the car owner returned faster — so fast that the engine hadn’t had time to cool.
This caused fuel vapor to block the carburetor. A minor design flaw, revealed only in this very specific (and deliciously strange) scenario.
What seemed like a joke… turned into a real discovery.
Thanks to a letter that sounded insane — GM engineers found a real issue they’d never seen coming.

 

[dnewton3]

Funny? Maybe.
True? Most deifintely not.

There's no way that the "timing" (elapsed duration of time) of getting the other flavors (chocolate, strawberry, whatever) made such a significant delta away from the car, especially given all the other variables like:
- other customers in line at checkout (could easily double or triple the delta of time walking to the back of a store)
- what other goods the customer may have bought at the store (who goes and buys ONLY ice cream night after night?)
- the variable of ambient outdoor temps, which affect the cooling rate of the gas line.

Internet garbage. Entertaining, but not true.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/

 

[Kira]

Thank goodness fuel injection was invented!

The story read like a filler piece from "Parade Magazine" (an old, mass-produced ad-heavy insert for skimpy Sunday papers all over the country).
Their stories were always very...vanilla!

 

[fantastic]

In all "Seriousness" That is some funny plain vanilla stuff!

 

[zrxkawboy]

Funny? Maybe.
True? Most deifintely not.

Internet garbage. Entertaining, but not true.

Yes, I suppose that's why he posted it in the humor section.

 

[dnewton3]

If funny is what we're after, let's consider how long it takes AI to associate ice cream with engine problems!