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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Nissan Leaf, meet Ford Pinto




There were two interesting cars parked on my street this week. One was a Nissan Leaf (see my test drive video here). The other was a Ford Pinto.

The Pinto was one of the forerunners of today's small hatchbacks. It had bucket seats with a hand brake between them, a back seat that folded down, a small four-cylinder engine, and of course a hatch back. I owned four of them through high school and college because used versions were inexpensive and easy to repair, although thanks to shody manufacturing, they never lasted long.

In high school, I won a gold medal with a painting of a Pinto that was spewing flowers out of its exhaust. It was titled "My rotary-engined, hydrogen-burning, Pinto car." This was in 1974. Turns out that rotary engines don't work so good and neither does hydrogen.

My next car will be electric. I've been waiting my whole life for one. No more oil changes, no more gasoline.

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