LOS ANGELES (Nov. 19, 2008) – Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., today announced a new electric-vehicle partnership with the state of Oregon, in line with Nissan’s commitment to begin offering pure electric cars in 2010 in the United States and Japan. The announcement came in a keynote address at the opening of the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show.

“We see in Oregon the vision that is evident in all the places that are eager for sustainable mobility,” said Mr. Ghosn. “Demonstrating their care for the environment, the state and its partners are creating the conditions that will promote zero-emission vehicles as an attractive choice for consumers.”

Nissan will launch its first electric vehicle in Oregon in late 2010. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski is proposing replacing the current $1,500 tax credit on hybrid vehicles with a $5,000 credit on all-electric cars.

[Source: Nissan]

I saw it twice in as many days; the second time I went and got my camera. Looks like a former Air Force truck (Dept. of Defense sticker 1979), maybe from a base in the Pacific somewhere. With those big 16" wheels and tires, it looks just like a cute little toy. I want it.

Paul has also sent in some nice shots of his personal '66 Ford pickup:

I washed the old Ford for the first time in five years (with a pot-scrubber), and thought I'd send you some pics. I bought this cast-iron beast 21 years ago for $500 to haul stuff to the dump, and that's where it spent this morning. My approach all these years has been to do the very least amount necessary to keep it running, and it still runs like a champ. It has the original 240 CID six that churns out 129 net hp at 3900 rpm. When the three-speed started popping out of gear, I replaced it with a Warner T-85 3-speed with overdrive. The Hurst floor shifter was already there when I bought it.

The Overdrive is set up to engage manually, allows clutch-less shifts, and yields 5 nicely-spaced gears (1 high and 2 low are too close together). Cruising at 65, the engine turns 1800 rpm. It happily rolls down the highway at eighty, if you don't mind the quarter-turn play in the manual steering and the pathetic little un-assisted drum brakes. Easy driving yields up to 20 mpg.

I use the truck exclusively to haul heavy loads. The "half-tonner" F-100 is rated to carry 1200 lbs. I consistently overload it. At the quarry, I once weighed out with a 3500 lb load, which happens to be what the tuck weighs empty. It was riding on all the axle bumper-stops, a terrific low-rider imitation. I've pulled Bobcat excavators on dual axle trailers (7,000 lbs total), but I have to be careful to pick a route where I won't have to stop on an incline, otherwise the lack of a granny low gear means a smoking clutch.

Any thoughts of a newer truck are erased when I see how high their beds are, literally twice as high as mine. But then it seems pick-ups only haul trailers now days with loads in them. I plan to keep working the Ford indefinitely, to see which one of us gives up first. If anyone is still interested, my write-up is here.

Stensgaard said, "If someone broke into your house, would you rather have the police be able to park in front of your house or have to park three blocks away and walk there?"

While obviously, we'd rather have law enforcement officers be able to park in front of our house, unless Officer Stensgaard's food happened to also be a burglar, there's a significant discrepancy between the example given and the actual situation. Bryant then acted not as an attorney, but as a private citizen by filing several complaints against the police officer.

In a happy ending for citizens maddened by power-hungry police officers, Officer Stensgaard was issued a summons to appear in traffic court and could face parking fines upwards of $540. The Law: 1, Abuse of Power: 0. [AP]

With Los Jalops never ending love of all things station wagon, and some rare spring sunshine on Saturday, I finally was able to get some shots of the 58 Edsel that runs around the neighborhood. All the trim appears to be in the back, and the seats are a little(??) on the rough side. The windows were up, so there were some reflections when I tried to shoot the interior. A couple of camera issues left me shooting at the equivalent of too high an ISO, hence a little graininess, etc. Here you go:

First AutoX [VW Vortex]

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Goddammit. We know there are idiots in this country who have no business reproducing. Sadly, this has always been the case. And as eugenics run counter to our antifascist tendencies, all we can do is use our bully pulpette to grouse about a bill in Oregon that lawmakers are attempting to pass, mandating that children under 13 ride in the back seat of automobiles. We're all for safety — to a point. And what of kids in non-quad-cab pickup trucks? Will children be banned from riding in sports cars? Or vehicles without five-star crash ratings? At some point we need to be cognizant that overregulation and a society of fear play right into the hands of the asshats who want all of us to be just like them. Hey brother, can you tell me the way to the nearest megachurch? – Davey G. Johnson

Bill details where kids could ride in cars [The Worldlink]

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Let's All Sign Up for the Nanny State! Is Compulsory Stability Control Coming? [Internal]

We're big fans of Portland, Oregon. Sure the downtown one-way system and obsessively obsessive buslanes are a pain in the ass and the punkers sparing for change give us bad Telegraph Ave and Gilman Street flashbacks, but it's a beautiful, civic-minded city. And PDX is simply one of the best airports in the country. Recently, critics of the facility commissioned a study of air quality in the flight path of the place. But when the Southwest Clean Air Agency said that they couldn't differentiate the difference between toxic compounds in the air from those produced by vehicles, rendering the study inconclusive, a fight broke out between airport proponents and eco-minded folks. However, most people agree that less benzene is a good idea. We can get behind less benzene, although the Ferrari 308 GT4's "benzina" gauge is totally freaking awesome. Just for the record. – Davey G. Johnson

PDX air-quality study: Cars, not planes, the problem [The Columbian]

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If the Kids are United: Oregon and Washington to Follow California Emissions Standards [Internal]

79-year-old Broughton Bishop of Portland, Oregon, is the man responsible for the fabulous unintentional hoonage caught on camera by a man on his roof with a video camera and too much time on his hands. Bishop's the guy in the XC90 who manages to do a convincing impression of a pinball on Portland's Southwest Salmon Street and then careening down 20th Ave. Bishop's wife, Mary, said that he would prefer not to be interviewed. After getting a gash to the head stapled up, Bishop went back to work. Goodonya, Broughton, we're glad you're not hurt and well, you entertained millions. – Davey G. Johnson

Driver fine, recitent after SUV slalom [The Oregonian]

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The inimitable ThnderBlt sent us a link to this clip the other day, but the damn thing crashed our browser. But the resourceful types at Autoblog — whose budget is larger than ours while their ADD isn't nearly as acute — dug up this version of the vid on YouTube. And oh, crappin' crap, the thing inspires involuntary peals of gigglage. We know what it's like to be helplessly sliding toward another vehicle at low speed on ice. It sucks in ways that few things that don't involve permanent injury, loss of house, home or girlfriend do. However, it's still damn funny to watch. – Davey G. Johnson

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We'll have a full report on the testing of the Olympia Charger at Portland International Raceway up here soon. In the meantime, Christophe Schwartz, general man about France, all 'round good guy and spearhead of the Oly Charger project, kicked down this vid of Dick Pierson's lap around PIR. Let us just say this — at any point on the track, one could pick the Charger out by ear. It made the Panoz track cars sound like childrens' playtoys. Manly thunder to the nth degree, this. Watch, listen and orgasm.

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Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington are expected to adopt the policies of the CARBies today, following the lead of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont in adopting California's set of stringent emissions standards, putting the number of states under the California Air Resources Board's authority by 2009. The combined 11 will make up 33% of the United States' automotive market, which gives the Golden State's agency a truly unique power.

While some groups are saying that this will pressure the Feds to adopt more stringent standards, we're not so sure. What it will do is pressure automakers into making cleaner cars across the board by creating a share of the market too large to simply ignore, as well as push speed-parts manufacturers to pursue CARB certification. Listening, Audi? Now if CARB could just do something about the gunk pumped out of the ships and trucks at the Ports of LA and Long Beach, we'd be happy campers.

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Oh man, the possibilities that arise when "bait" and "Beirut" could be used in the same sentence. Sadly for our alliterative aspirations, the Lebanon above is in the great state of Oregon. And like its fellow Oregonian burg Salem, Lebanon is instituting a bait car program of its own. Officials are keeping fairly tight-lipped about what's involved, as they don't wanna tip off potential crooks, but they say they will swap cars with other municipalities using the same system, allowing for a wider pool of vehicles to catch the poipatraytahs all unawares-like.

Lebanon P.D. prepares to use its new bait cars [Albany Democrat-Herald]

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No apologies to Chris Carraba and his brand of tatted up, beach-bro wuss rock for the above, by the way. Officials in Oregon have decided to make life simpler for owners of '96-and-newer vehicles; for 39 bucks, they can buy a little dash-mounted box that plugs into the OBD II port and checks to see if all emissions-related components of the engine are performing as intended. The boxes then transmit a signal to the state, who then notifies the owner of a problem and gives said polluters 45 days to fix it.

Also on the slate: self-service smog kiosks where drivers insert a credit credit card and plug a cord into the car to check the emissions levels. The cost is the same as a regular smog check, but the kiosks will be open 24 hours, making for a bit more in the way of a convenience factor for motorists who tend to work during smog check stations' open hours. The old Dead Kennedys album title Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death comes to mind right about now.

Oregon cars to start tattling on emissions [The Olympian]

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Understand him, he'll understand you/For you are him, and he is you.
- Jimmy Pursey

Oregon and Washington have something to say; they're gonna say it now, for now is today: they're planning to follow California's stringent pollution control laws, making the entire Western Seaboard (hey, if the East's got a Seaboard, why can't the West?) its own little anti-emissions bloc. Automotive lobbyists are in a tizzy about this, and especially about Cali's extra-strict new smog laws. On the other coast, six states are also contemplating the implementation of California standards, the first time any Eastern state has publicly adopted anything Californian since Soleil Moon Frye.

West Coast states unite on cleaner car regulations [Detroit News]

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