There’s no official rules for what makes a valid, viable car accessory. Really, it can be pretty much anything that somehow works with or on or around a car, and that seems to be what the makers of this thing, the Remington Products (Canada) Ltd GAS-MINDER, were counting on. Because this may be the most minimal, ridiculous, half-assinest car “accessory” I’ve ever seen. Let’s look at what it does, though even using “does” as a verb is pretty generous. Mostly what this thing does is exist.
The GAS-MINDER seems to be designed to work with cars like the pre-’62 Volkswagen Beetle (and a number of other European cars of the era) that lack a gas gauge, and instead have a reserve fuel tank.
In the case of the Beetle, the reserve tank held 1.3 gallons – good for about 37 miles of travel – and was accessed with a little lever under the dashboard that had three positions: main tank, fuel supply off, and reserve tank. You can see the lever here, and, because this owner’s manual page is from 1961 when Beetles started (midway through that year’s production run) to have actual fuel gauges instead, you can see that also:
I’m pretty sure most people preferred having a real fuel gauge. But, if you didn’t, and just had the reserve fuel tap, you could order yourself a GAS-MINDER:
The Remington Products (Canada) Ltd. company claims this thing is “BETTER THAN A GAS GAUGE” and I suppose that’s true if you had no concept of what a gas gauge actually does. The GAS-MINDER is a little reflective magnet that reads ON RESERVE, and you’re supposed to stick it on your dash when you switch over to the reserve tank, so, I guess, you don’t forget and run out of gas somewhere.
That’s it! That’s all it is! A little magnet! The ad just says to slap it under the dash when you’re not using the reserve tank, so you don’t, you know, get confused. This is basically a post-it note. I like how they boldly say “NEVER RUN OUT OF GAS AGAIN,” too, as though this was some kind of guarantee of that, somehow.
I’m impressed, really. I’d also love to have heard the pitch for how this was better than a gas gauge, too. I guess gas gauges can be pretty confusing, with their, um, one needle and all those two letters. Well, to be fair, the VW gauge used 1/1, 1/2 and R (for Reserve) so there are fractions involved.
I wonder if they also offered a set of SPEED-MINDER magnets, where you could just stick a little magnet with 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 and so on on the dash, depending on how fast you were going. Seems like that would be BETTER THAN A SPEEDOMETER, right?
Jeeeeeez.
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