Yes indeed, hard times for sure.
No one else has mentioned much about the actual history of alternative fuels on this thread, so I will throw in a few lines.
Please bear in mind, I have done no serious research, merely a few Google inquiries.
Basically, alternative fuels other than oil based products have been around about as long as the internal combustion engine itself.
Generally speaking, it seems that oil based products were found early on to be many times more efficient than other types of fuels so they became dominant almost from the beginning. But, for various reasons, there was a steady market for many types of alternative fuels in many geographic areas.
The earliest oil fields seem to have been found in the former Soviet Union based on what I have read. Baku in the 1860's and Azerbaijan in the 1890's.
By the early 1900's, fields had been discovered in such widely diverse areas as Canada, Sumatra and other former Dutch East Indies countries, Iran, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Romania and of course some fields in the US. This allowed oil based products to be the dominant fuel in most countries.
WWI, of course, disturbed the distribution patterns and many countries that were cut off from oil were forced to use wood, coal, natural gas and any other similar product (peat perhaps?) as a substitute.
Once the recovery from that war was under way, the traditional oil suppliers were able to serve their former markets again and oil based products to once again become dominant.
Sadly, The Great Depression caused a different kind of problem for countries with no direct oil supplies from within their own borders or from their colonies. Balance of Payment difficulties and a lack of Foreign Exchange issues caused many countries even in peace time to make use of alternative fuels. This even when major new oil fields were being discovered in the US, The Middle East and large reserves in Venezuela. In many countries, WWII was just a continuation of the problem although now on a much larger scale. Here, entire geographic areas were almost totally cut off from receiving oil products.
From what I have read, the fuel of choice was probably determined mainly by what was available locally.
In Scandinavia, where there were huge forested areas, wood and wood by products provided the fuel. In countries where coal was readily available, middle Europe, that was used and in countries with a good Natural Gas supply and distribution network they used that medium. France, Belgium and Holland would fit that model.
It is for the above reasons that we will see on this thread a variety of solutions to the lack of oil products and why we will see a given geographic area seem to use one specific solution and another a different solution.
Photographic evidence would indicate that by about 1948/1949 the absolute need for alternative fuels was pretty much over and most vehicles once again ran on oil based products.
Today, the Poster Child alternative to oil based fuels is the Electric motor but that is a story for another day.
Here is a photo of a restored Citroen that I picked up today while researching a puzzle question.
Bill
