I’ve seen some pretty clever “snake oil” products out on the market. I could spend hours on how ridiculous most of them are, however I’m going to focus just on those products related to the automotive field. Almost all of these products offer to boost your gas mileage by some crazy number.
This is where I should clarify what I define as “snake oil”. Easy example: cold air intakes are a performance part, the “tornado” swirl fan is snake oil. I use this example because on the snake oil scale, the “tornado” is probably the most legitimate of all. There is a little bit of science about why it works, but it falls in the snake oil category because it can’t possibly do what the advertisements claim. It’s like the “super fruit” juices these pyramid sales people try to pedal as the next miracle drink. I’ll agree that it is good for you, and healthy, but it’s not worth the $40/bottle and don’t even try to tell me it cured your cancer.
What surprises me the most is that people actually believe these claims. This morning as I was going through the gadget daily deal sites I found something that is so off the wall that I had to write about it. The new Neo-Socket gas saver. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I didn’t just find one of these things either… I found this one, this one, this one, this one… tired of looking at links yet? If you’re not immediately repulsed by these, you should at least have little caution flags shooting up in your brain when you read the ads.
Now you should have laughed at those almost as hard as I did, but there are other items on the market that are much more convincing. What’s the easiest way to avoid buying snake oil? If the part didn’t come installed in your car from the factory, and isn’t replacing a part that the factory installed, it’s snake oil. It’s that easy.