Carburetor (pronounced kahr-buh-rey-ter or kahr-byuh-yey-tor)
(1) A device for mixing vaporized fuel with air to produce a combustible or explosive mixture for use in the cylinder(s) or chambers of an internal-combustion engine.
(2) In the slang of drug users, a water pipe or bong; a device for mixing air with burning cannabis, cocaine or other narcotics (rare since the 1970s and then usually in the form “carb” or “carby”).
1866: From the verb carburate, from the Italian carburate (to mix (air) with hydrocarbons”), an inflection of carburare & the feminine plural of carburato. As a transitive verb carburet was used mean “to react with carbon”. Strangely, the exact origin of the word is uncertain but it was likely a portmanteau of carbon (in the sensor of a clipping of hydrocarbon) + burette (a device for dispensing accurately measured quantities of liquid). The construct was carb (a combined form of carbon) + -uret (an archaic suffix from Modern Latin) (uretum to parallel French words using ure). The earlier compound carburet (compound of carbon and another substance; now displaced by carbide) was from 1795 and it was used as a verb (to combine with carbon) after 1802. The use with reference to the fuel systems used in the internal combustion engines of vehicles dates from 1896. Carburator, carbureter and carburetter were the now obsolete earlier forms and the standard spelling in the UK, Australia & New Zealand is carburettor. Carb & carby (carbs & carbies the plural) are the the universally used informal terms (gasifer was rare) and although most sources note the shortened forms weren’t recorded until 1942 it’s assumed by most they’d long been in oral use. Outside of a few (declining) circles, “carb” is probably now more generally recognized as the clipping of carbohydrate. Carburetor & carburetion are nouns; the noun plural is carburetors.
Some carburetor porn
One carburetor: 1931 Supercharged Duesenberg SJ with 1 x updraft Stromberg (left; the exhaust manifold the rare 8-into-1 monel "sewer-pipe") (left), 1966 Ford GT40 (Mark II, 427) with 1 x downdraft Holly (centre; the exhaust headers were referred to as the "bundle of snakes") and 1960 Austin Seven (later re-named Austin Mini 850) with 1 x sidedraft SU.
Except for some niches in aviation, small engines (lawnmowers, garden equipment etc) and for machines where originality is required (historic competition and restorations), carburetors are now obsolete and have been replaced by fuel-injection. There is the odd soul who misses the challenge of tinkering with a carburetor, especially those with the rare skill to hand-tune multiple systems like the six downdraft Webers found on some pre-modern Ferraris, but modern fuel injection systems are more precise, more reliable and unaffected by the G-forces which could lead to fuel starvation. Fuel injection also made possible the tuning of induction systems to produce lower emissions and reduced fuel consumption, the latter something which also extended engine life because all the excess petrol which used to end up contaminating the lubrication system stayed instead in the fuel tank.
Two carburetors: 1970 Triumph Stag with 2 x sidedraft Strombergs (left), 1960 Chrysler 300F with 2 x Carter four-barrel downdrafts on Sonoramic cross-ram (long) manifold (centre) and 1969 Ford Boss 429 with 2 x Holly four-barrel downdrafts on hi-riser manifold.
Until the 1920s, all but a handful of specialized devices were simple, gravity-fed units and that was because the engines they supplied were a far cry from the high-speed, high compression things which would follow. In the 1920s, influenced by improvements in military aviation pioneered during World War I (1914-1918), the first recognizably “modern” carburetors began to appear, the conjunction of adjustable jet metering and vacuum controls replacing the primitive air valves and pressurized fuel supply mechanisms allowed engineers to use a more efficient “downdraft” design, replacing the “updraft” principle necessitated by the use of the gravity-feed. Between them, the “downdraft” and “sidedraft” (a favorite of European manufacturers) would constitute the bulk of carburetor production. The next major advance was the “duplexing” of the carburetor’s internals, doubling the number of barrels (known now variously as chokes, throats or venturi). Although such designs could (and sometimes were) implemented to double the capacity (analogous with the dual-core CPUs (central processing units) introduced in 2005), the greatest benefit was that they worked in conjunction with what was known as the “180o intake manifold”, essentially a bifurcation of the internals which allowed each barrel to operate independently through the segregated passages, making the delivery more efficient to the most distant cylinders, something of real significance with straight-eight engines. Few relatively simple advances have delivered such immediate and dramatic increases in performance: When the system was in 1934 applied to the them relatively new Ford V8 (the “Flathead”), power increased by over 25%.
Three carburetors: 1967 Jaguar E-Type (XKE) 4.2 with 3 x sidedraft SUs (left), 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/C with 3 x downdraft Webers (centre) and 1965 Pontiac GTO with 3 x downdraft Rochesters.
Advances however meant the demand for more fuel continued and the first solution was the most obvious: new manifolds which could accommodate two or even three carburetors depending on the configuration of the engine. Sometimes, the multiple devices would function always in unison and sometimes a secondary unit would cut-in only on demand as engine speed rose and more fuel was needed, an idea manufacturers would perfect during the 1960s. World War II (1939-1945) of course saw enormous advances in just about every aspect of the design of internal combustion engines (ICE) and carburetors too were improved but in a sense, the concept had plateaued and it was fuel-injection to which most attention was directed, that being something which offered real advantages in flight given it was unaffected by G-forces, atmospheric pressure or acrobatics, working as well in inverted as level flight, something no carburetor could match.
There is a quirk in the history of the triple carburetor Jaguars, a configuration first offered on the 1957 XKSS after have been used on various versions of the factory's C-Type (XK120-C) & D-Type race cars. The first general-production Jaguar XK-Six to use the configuration was the XK150S in 1958 but when the last of the six-cylinder E-Types left the line 1971, that was the end of the line for the triple carburettor Jaguar. It is however misleading to suggest the XK150S, E-Type and Mark X/420G were the only series-production Jaguars with triple carburetors because on some cars during the 1950s & 1960s, the factory fitted a smaller electromagnetically controlled “auxiliary carburetor” which augmented the main pair, making starting easier. The unusual arrangement acted as a choke but it was a complicated solution to a simple problem and, while performing faultlessly in testing, in the real world with gas (petrol) of varying quality and in different climatic conditions, it sometimes proved troublesome and there were owners who gave up and installed a conventional choke.
Four carburetors: 1973 Jaguar E-Type (S3) with 4 x sidedraft Zenith-Strombergs (the Jaguar V12 was unusual in that the carburetors sat outside the Vee, left), Ford Cross Boss intake manifold (developed for the Boss 302 used in the Trans-Am Mustangs in 1970, technically the Autolite carburetor is a single “in-line downdraft four barrel” but the engine interacted with it as if it was being fed by four individual units, centre) and 1965 Ford GT40 (X1 Roadster 1, 289) with 4 x downdraft Webers (right, again with the "bundle of snakes" exhaust headers).
After the war, like the chip manufacturers with their multi-core CPUs in the early 2000s, the carburetor makers developed four-barrel devices. In Europe, the preference for multiple single or two barrel (though they tended to call them “chokes”) induction but in the US, by the early-1950s just beginning the power race which would rage for almost two decades, for the Americans the four-barrel was ideal for their increasingly large V8s although sometimes even the largest available wasn’t enough and the most powerful engines demanded with two four-barrels and three two-barrels. It was in the 1950s too that fuel-injection reached road cars, appearing first in a marvelously intricate mechanical guise on the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL (W198) Gullwing. Others understood the advantages and developed their own fuel-injection systems, both mechanical and electronic but while both worked well, the early electronics were too fragile to be used in such a harsh environment and these attempts were quickly abandoned and not revisited until the revolution in integrated circuits (IC) later in the century. Mechanical fuel-injection, while it worked well, was expensive and never suitable for the mass-market and even Mercedes-Benz reserved it for their more expensive models, most of the range relying on one or two carburetors. In the US, Chevrolet persisted with mechanical fuel injection but availability dwindled until only the Corvette offered the option and in 1965 when it was made available with big-block engines which offered more power at half the cost, demand collapsed and the system was discontinued, the big engines fed either by three two barrels or one very large four barrel.
Other four barrel devices
Four (and more) barrel weapons have long been common in fixed or mobile structures (warships, gun batteries etc) but are rare in anything hand-held because of the increases imposed in size & weight as well as the heat generated. In fiction (notably video games and horror films) they’re a popular prop and the four barrel shotgun in Don Coscarelli’s cult classic Phantasm (1979) was among the more memorable. An ad-hoc creation born of the need for more firepower (very much in the vein of the “…going to need a bigger boat” philosophy in the Film Jaws (1975), a line apparently improvised during filming because it appears neither in Peter Benchley’s (1940-2006) 1974 novel nor the original screenplay), it was made by welding together two double barrel shotguns and named the “Regman Quad-Barrel Dwarfcutter”. It was that sort of film and freaks attracted to the design (which does seem hard to resist) have created Nerf-guns in the style. Although rare, hand-carried, multi-barrel firearms have a history dating back centuries and provided the intended application is appropriate, they can be both effective and convenient, a number of manufacturers offering three and four barrel shotguns, all of which presumably include a section in the owner’s manual covering “recoil management”. Very much in the spirit of those who took advantage of the modular construct of the early (and anyway already sometimes lethal) two-stroke Kawasaki triples (H1, H2, S1, S2 & S3; 1969-1975) to build a 48-cylinder version, nine-barrel(!) shotguns have been made... just in case.
Custom four barrel Vierling longarm by Johann Fanzoj (1790) of Ferlach, Austria.
The four-barrelled longarm was configured with a side-by-side double rifle (calibre: 9,3/9,3x74R), paired with an over-and-under shotgun (gauge 12/12/76). Built to a customer specification to shoot four (plus two) times in sequence with “hot” barrels, the Vierling used H&H-type sidelocks with automatic ejectors. An impressive example of the gunsmith's art, this was not a Phantasmesque welding job but an intricate design which had to regulate the rifle barrels two-times-two so they would shoot together to the same point of impact, in sequence. First, the 9,3 barrels discharge, then by pushing the barrel selector forward, the shooter continues with the 12-gauge barrels with automatic ejection of the shotgun cartridges facilitating quick reloading… just in case.
Even before we had Greta Thunberg (b 2003) to show us the errors of our ways, exhaust pipes were rarely admired and associated mostly with noise, smell and filth but for some small sub-sets of humanity (such as owners of C2 (1963-1967) & early (1968-1972) C3 (1968-1982) Chevrolet Corvettes and Shelby American AC Cobras (1962-1967 and the many replicas since), they're a fetish but it's on motorcyclists the pipes and their sometimes convoluted paths exert a particular fascination; for them exhaust pipe porn is a real thing. The manufacturers and after-market suppliers came to understand the attraction and over the years concocted some memorable and occasionally bizarre systems but the Italians in particular have managed sometimes to arrange things in a way which reflects the nation's artistic sensibilities, studious critics acknowledging the contribution. When the Guggenheim Museum in New York staged The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition (October 2001-January 2003), one featured machine was the MV Agusta F4, and there was a focus on the way its four pipes exited rakishly from the tail section.
Collectors also prize bizarre and ambitious designs such as the four-barreled “duck’s foot” pistol. Historians have questioned whether these weapons really were manufactured in the Georgian or Regency eras and some suggest they were a product of entrepreneurial Victorians creating “relics” which played into prejudices about just how bad were what were then the “olden days”. The legend is these were early crowd-control devices with which some worthy (squire, mill or mine owner etc) could deter the mob (revolting peasants, disgruntled factory workers, whatever) which would have been inclined to take a chance against someone armed only with a single-shot pistol. There’s nothing in the historic record to suggest riots and strikes were ever “controlled” with such things but the Victorians of the late nineteenth century were well aware they were the first generations to benefit from a standing, regulated constabulary so the need for such things would have seemed at least plausible. The legend is they were also carried by naval captains in case of mutiny and while the Admiralty apparently never issued them, it’s not impossible some officers bought their own… just in case.
Five carburetors: Le Monstre's 331 cubic inch (5.4 litre) Cadillac V8 (left) with its unusual (though not unique) five-carburetor induction system; the layout (one in each corner, one in the centre) is a "quincunx", from the Latin quīncunx. Le Monstre ahead of Petit Pataud, Le Mans, 1950 (right). At the fall of the checkered flag, the positions were reversed.
Le Monstre was a much-modified 1950 Cadillac which ran at that year's Le Mans 24 hour endurance classic. one half of a two car team the other being a close to stock 1950 Cadillac coupe. The idea behind the five carburettors was that by the use of progressive throttle-linkages, when ultimate performance wasn’t required the car would run on a single (central) carburettor, the other four summoned on demand and in endurance racing, improved fuel economy can be more valuable than additional power. That’s essentially how most four-barrel carburettors worked, two venturi usually providing the feed with all four opened only at full throttle and Detroit would later refine the model by applying “méthode Le Monstre” to the triple carburettor systems many used between 1957-1971. As far as is known, the only time a manufacturer flirted with the idea of a five carburetor engine was Rover which in the early 1960s was experimenting with a 2.5 (153 cubic inch) litre in-line five cylinder which was an enlargement of their 2.0 litre (122 cubic inch) four. Fuel-injection was the obvious solution but the systems then were prohibitively expensive (for the market segment Rover was targeting) so the prototypes ended up with two carburettors feeding three cylinders and one the other two, an arrangement as difficult to keep in tune as it sounds. Rover’s purchase of the aluminium 3.5 litre (214 cubic inch) V8 abandoned by General Motors (GM) meant the project was terminated and whatever the cylinder count, mass-produced fuel injection later made any configuration possible. Motor racing is an unpredictable business and, despite all the effort lavished on Le Monstre, in the 1950 Le Mans 24 hour, it was the less ambitious Petit Pataud which did better, finishing a creditable tenth, the much modified roadster coming eleventh having lost many laps while being dug from the sand after an unfortunate excursion from the track. Still, the results proved the power and reliability of Cadillac’s V8 and Europe took note: Over the next quarter century a whole ecosystem would emerge, crafting high-priced trans-Atlantic hybrids which combined elegant European coachwork with cheap, powerful, reliable US V8s, the lucrative fun lasting until the first oil crisis began in 1973.
A tiny lunatic fringe of the hot rod community did in the 1950s make use of Le Monstre's five-carburetor quincunx atop V8 engines and they were more ambitious still, using two barrel carburettors so that means ten throats for eight cylinders which sounds excessive but, as configured, the arrangement did make sense. They generally used standard intake manifolds, modified to the extent of retaining the central unit in its stock positing while installing the other four in an extended X, all five often the familiar Rochester 2GC two-barrel. What all this plumbing and hardware provided was an early form of the variable fuel metering now effortlessly delivered by modern electronic fuel injection in that the centre unit meant relatively economical operation and civilized characteristics for urban use while the four outboard took over under heavy throttle application, each located directly over an intake port for optimal distribution of the fuel air mix. Synchronising multiple carburetors can of course be challenging when there’s two or three so five sounds worse but the configuration did simplify things because only the central one had to be adjusted for idle and part-throttle use while the outer four were tuned only for high throughput. There was however the need to engineer a mechanical throttle linkage operating in two planes and while this became for years a common fitting on systems with three two barrels or two four barrels, with five in a quincunx the machinery was bulky and intricate and given the advantages of five turned out to be marginal at best, the idea never caught one and the systems are now just curiosities to be admired by those who adore intricacy for its own sake.
1953 Ford X-100: With roof panel retracted (it was “targa” before told us there were Targas (left), the five carburetor apparatus atop the 317 cubic inch (5.2 litre) Lincoln Y-Block V8 (centre) and the built-in hydraulic jacking system in use (right).
It wasn’t only the one-off Le Mans Cadillac or crazy hot-rodders who took the quincunx path, the apparatus appearing also on the 1953 Ford X-100. In the years to come, such a thing would be called a “concept car” but that term didn’t then exist so Ford used the more familiar “dream car” and that does seem a more romantic way of putting it. Reflecting the optimistic spirit of the early post-war years, the X-100 included a number of innovations including the use of radial-ply tyres, a built-in hydraulic jacking system, a rain-sensor which automatically would trigger an electric motor to close the sliding plexiglass roof panel, a built-in dictaphone, a telephone in the centre console and the convenience of heated seats and an electric shaver mounted in the glove compartment. Some of the features became mainstream products, some not and while the “variable volume horn” wasn’t picked up by the industry, one did appear on the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100; 1963-1981) although that was a rare supportive gesture. It was also an age of imaginative labels and Ford called their quincunx induction system the “Multi-Plex”; while the engineering proved a cul-de-sac, the name did later get picked up by multi-screen suburban cinema complexes. For the X-100, Ford used a central Holly two-barrel while the outer four were Ford model 94 two-barrels. X-100 still exists and is displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
In a number of quirky coincidences, the name X-100 seems to once have been an industry favourite because as well as the 1953 Ford “dream car”, it was the US Secret Service’s designation for the 1961 Lincoln Continental parade convertible in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. One might have thought that macabre association might have been enough for the “X-100” tag to not again be used but, presumably because the Secret Service’s internal codes weren’t then general public knowledge, in 1969 Ford’s Mercury division released an X-100 as an up-market version of its second generation (1969-1970) Marauder. Notionally, the X-100 was a “high performance” version but its 365 (gross) horsepower 429 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 was an option in lesser priced Marauders which meant the X-100, weighed down by the additional luxury fittings, was just a little slower than the cheaper models with the 429. The market for “full-sized” high performance cars was anyway by 1969 in the final stages of terminal decline and although an encouraging 5635 were sold in 1969, sales the next year fell to 2646 and the X-100 was retired at the end of the 1970 and not replaced. Most bizarre though was project X-100, a US$75 million (then a lot of what was at the time borrowed money) contract in 1943 awarded to Chrysler to design, machine and nickel-plate the inner surfaces of the cylindrical diffusers required to separate uranium isotopes. Part of the Manhattan Project which built the world’s first atomic bombs, Chrysler built over 3,500 diffusers used at the plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and many were still in service as late as the 1980s. Not until after the first A-bomb was used against Hiroshima in August 1945 did most of the X-100 project’s workers become aware of the use being made of the precision equipment they were producing.
A “slingshot dragster” with a GMC 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) straight-six and five Stromberg 97 carburetors. The machine is typical of the “garage-built” cars used in drag racing in the 1950s & 1960s and this one reputedly won its class at the Daytona Beach Winter Nationals in Florida one year in the early 1960s.
Although on a six cylinder engine the use of five carburetors may sound as counter-intuitive as five on a V8, as anyone from the long unfashionable school of structural-functionalism will explain, if something exists in its niche, that's because it fulfils some need. Five carburettors did, for use in certain forms of motorsport, appear on some six cylinder engines and although the Mcgurk Company made many, the best known manifolds were those produced Howard Johansen’s (1910-1988) Howard Automotive for the 302 cubic inch (4.9 litre) GMC in-line six (1952-1960). Built originally for heavy-duty military operations, the GMC 302 was famously robust and, especially when equipped with the Wayne or Howard 12-port heads, was capable of reliably producing impressive power and prodigious torque. At the time, on the basis of cost-breakdown, it was an attractive option because it easily could be made to out-perform both Ford’s outdated Flathead V8 and most of their (frankly disappointing) Y-Blocks while more modern designs like Chrysler's Hemi and the Cadillac V8 were much more expensive to buy and develop. The GMC 302’s inherent torque curve was, for drag-racing purposes, actually better than many V8s and they were for years a popular choice until in 1955 the appearance of Chevrolet’s epoch-making small-block V8 meant the universe shifted and there were by then anyway cheap, used Chrysler Hemis aplenty. Despite that, they retained a following and remained class-competitive for almost another decade.
The reason five carburettors on a six cylinder engine made sense was the math of the flow rate was ideal and it avoided the more complex construction a manifold’s runners would have required were three two barrels fitted. What the builders used was a formula which calculated the optimal cfm (cubic feet per minute) flow for the fuel-air mix, the critical variables being engine displacement and rpm (crankshaft revolutions per minute). It was a particular application of the math because while it was understood an increase in the cfm number beyond the optimal would increase power at high engine speeds, that was both wasted effort and counter-productive because the gain would come at the expense of low and mid-range torque which is what the dragsters needed to maximize their initial acceleration and thus attain the best ET (elapsed time) over the quarter-mile. This was exactly the reason why Ford’s Boss 429 (1969-1970) with its huge intake ports was not a success on the drag strip: it was designed to run for hours at full throttle on the NASCAR Ovals something at which it excelled though those big ports meant it would later take to turbo-charging like few others. Because the Stromberg 97’s flow-rate could be tweaked to about 162 cfm, five would deliver an aggregate 810 which was close to ideal and the significance of Howard Johansen’s manifold was the intake runners were precisely machined to ensure a constant flow of the fuel-air mix, cognizant of the firing order, the 90o internal turns created to generate sufficient turbulence to attain a perfect fuel-air mix. Because of the math, although a six-carb manifold could have been designed, adding a sixth Stromberg 97 would only have added weight and compromised the desired torque curve.
Six carburetors: 1979 Honda CBX with six sidedraft Keihins (left), 1965 Lamborghini P400 Miura (prototype chassis) with 6 x downdraft Webers (centre) and 1970 Ferrari 365GTB/4 (Daytona) with 6 x downdraft Webers (right).
It was the development of these big four barrels which in the US reduced the place of the multiple systems to a niche reserved for some specialist machines and even the engineers admitted that for what most people did, most of the time, the multiple setups offered no advantage. The research did however indicate they were still a selling point and because people were still prepared to pay, they stayed on the option list. There were a handful of engines which actually needed the additional equipment to deliver maximum power but they were rare, racing derived units and constituted not even 1% of Detroit’s annual production. Paradoxically, the main advantage of the multiple setups was economy, a six-barrel (ie 3 x two-barrel) engine running only on its central carburetor unless the throttle was pushed open. As it was, the last of Detroit’s three-carb setups (a reputed seven 1972 Plymouth Road Runners with the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 so equipped produced in September 1971) left the line in 1971, the configuration unable easily to be engineered to meet the increasingly onerous exhaust emission rules. In the UK, Jensen were advised a batch of the the now unlawful (in the US) 440s was available for sale and noting the things could still be sold in other places, purchased 232 as what was planned as the first tranche to be fitted to their Interceptor SP (Six-Pack), a new top-of-the-line model to replace the intriguing but troublesome FF. For all sorts of reasons, the "SP venture" didn't end well and the company never took up the option to buy a second tranche.
Eight carburetors: 1955 Moto Guzzi 500cm3 Ottocilindri V8 Grand Prix motorcycle with eight Dell'Orto sidedrafts. One carburetor per cylinder was long common practice in motorcycle design and the two 1959 Daimler V8s (2.5 & 4.6 litre, 1959-1969 and designed along the lines of a motorcycle power-plant) were intended originally to be air-cooled and run eight carburetors; the production versions were water-cooled and used two sidedraft SUs. The very thought of keeping eight carburetors synchronized would alarm most but clearly such intricacy doesn't scare the Italians because, in 1967, the Cooper-Maserati Formula One (F1) team, seeking that elusive quality of increased power and sustained reliability did ponder bolting a dozen Webers to what was their by then antiquated (pre-historic in F1 terms) 3.0 litre V12. To the eternal regret of those who value mechanical complication for its own sake, that idea, like the notion of using three spark plugs per cylinder, never left the engineers' sketch pads; rational thought prevailed and fuel injection was adopted.
In the age of over-the-counter fuel injection systems and a still lively supply of high-cfm two and four barrel carburetors, there is of course no need for even big-displacement V8s to be fitted with eight carburettors but it is occasionally done as a visual treat: it’s carb porn. This hot rod was built in the last decade and features eight Stromberg 97 carburetors mounted on an Edelbrock intake manifold atop a stroked 392 cubic inch (6.5 litre) Chrysler Hemi V8 with four-bolt main bearings, attached to a Muncie M22 four-speed manual transmission. All those components were staples of the hot rod community in the 1960s so it’s a delightfully nostalgic agglomeration which will be capable of impressive performance although it should be used as a show-piece rather than exploiting its capabilities because the adherence to the way things used to be done extended to the chassis, the suspension using transverse leaf springs with the front an implementation of the legendary “suicide” apparatus (where the front axle sits ahead of the spring mounts meaning in the unlikely event of catastrophic chassis failure, the frame can, at whatever speed the vehicle is travelling, “dig into” the road surface). In that spirit, braking is drums on all four wheels although, unlike the original 1930 Model A, they are hydraulically activated. It was a thoughtful and well-executed build and at auction in September, 2025, it sold for US$98,500.
Lindsay Lohan admiring Herbie’s carburetor in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).
Before fuel-injection was late in the century used for some, most Volkswagen Type 1s (Beetles) were fitted with a single Solex carburettor although there were exceptions, some more expensive and higher performance (such things are relative) variants in Europe, Mexico and Brazil using twin Solexes. Additionally, because it wasn’t difficult to swap in the twin carburettor units used in the Karmann Ghia (Types 14 & 34) and Type 3 cars, many were upgraded and over the years there were literally dozens of kits to create multi-carburetor induction systems using equipment from a variety of manufacturers including Solex, Weber, Dell'Orto and Kadron (Solex-Brosol).
