Over the last few years, we’ve published some doozies on April Fools Day. When we say “doozie” we’re referring to the fact that they are so believable, we have been contacted by industry leaders a number of times once the story was published, asking to make things less believable because their phones and email accounts were blowing up with concerned enthusiasts.

So rather than creating another firestorm for April Fools Day, we decided to just take a look back at the top three April Fools articles on EngineLabs (and discuss how two of them actually came true, scarily enough!)

1. California Air Resources Board (CARB) To Ban Turbochargers

This one was the big one, that really got us in hot water. It exploded on a scale that no one ever expected, and apparently was just believable enough that everyone reading it forgot what day it was. The really scary thing is that life has imitated art, unfortunately, as California recently started sending notices to the owners of certain diesel trucks, that their 2007-2009 vehicles will no longer be emissions compliant, and they must sell the vehicle out of state, or install a newer, compliant powerplant. We really hope we didn’t give California lawmakers any ideas with that one.

2. Diamond Star Motors To Return With A Turbocharged HEMI Inline-Six

This one is another “Holy cow, we predicted the future” article. Falling back to the old Diamond Star Motors collaboration between Chrysler and Mitsubishi, we jokingly announced a turbocharged inline-six-cylinder from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles that would revive the renowned “DSM” nameplate. While we gave the fantasy engine some outlandish specs, we still received emails from people wanting to know more about our source for the engine program with more disappointment than expected when we told them it was, in fact, a joke. But, maybe FCA (now, Stellantis) was listening, because they really did just announce a twin-turbo inline-six last week.

3. Prototype New “Hot-V” LS Engine Spied; Rumored To Be In Development

The Hot-V LS engine never came true in any capacity like the two previous articles, but this April Fools article still delivered enough trickery to make Loki proud. We reached out to our friend Jeff Smith and asked him to flip a set of heads on an LS, to make for an unusual image. Since the Hot-V setup isn’t unheard of, it was easy to pepper in real benefits of the configuration. That was enough to get people hook, line, and sinker, as we got messages for quite a while after asking how the valvetrain would be addressed, or that our sources were faulty, because GM would never leave the LT architecture to go back to the LS. This was confirmation, to us at least, that it was a great joke. Maybe not so much to the folks who didn’t get the joke, but after all, isn’t that the point of April Fools Day?