It’s definitely at least “Internet Lore” at this point? I mean the car company isn’t a namesake for no reason. I don’t want to give The Oatmeal too much credit but it seems to have been the meme generator for a lot of ‘the legend’ on the web, though it’s been kind of a counter-culture staple basically since he died.

IDK, just one of those things that I got interested enough to read actual books about awhile ago and it’s kind of scary how much “common knowledge” is more “common mythology”.