My Day At The AutoShow
On Saturday my wife and I met up with some friends of ours in Toronto for a pre-planned girl’s/guy’s day in the big city. The ladies spent their time at the Eaton Centre, while we (manly men) took in the Canadian International Autoshow at the Metro Convention Centre.
To be totally honest, this sort of thing is actually not really my usual cup of tea (cars have never really excited me), but my friend got the tickets for free and I figured it might at least be a good opportunity to get up close and personal with some ‘green’ vehicles, if nothing else. As it turns out, I had a lot of fun and would certainly consider going again in future years.
I’d have to say the highlight of the day was coming face to face with the Ford ‘Super Chief’ (shown above). I’ve never seen anything remotely like it before. At first glance, although impressive in appearance, I thought it was simply the ultimate macho-man monster truck (it is absolutely massive!). As I learned however, it actually has a ‘triflex fuel engine’ – that is to say it is designed to run on hydrogen, E85 and gasoline. Apparently it can even travel up to 500 miles between fill-ups.
Although it’s still not exactly a treehuggermobile, it IS at least nice to see some potentially greener options for the diehard truck fanatics (who knows if/when it might ever hit the streets though).
If you want to learn more about this behemoth of masculinity be sure to check out Ford’s Super Chief press release from Jan 2006.
Of all the companies represented at the show I’d definitely say that GM impressed me the most – unlike any other manufacturer, they actually had a section dedicated to their green initiatives and a spokeperson on-hand to chat with anyone that came by.
I guess it’s not too surprising that they are trying to toot their green horn as loudly as possible after all the bad press associated with the movie ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?”, but regardless of motive it is still nice to see. Be sure to check out their Green By Design site if you want to learn more.
One thing I was a little disappointed about was that they didn’t have a Chevy Volt on-hand, but c’est la vie I guess!
A couple other green vehicles worthy of mention of course were the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid. To be totally honest, although the former was pretty cool in it’s own right, I’d have to say the latter totally blew it out of the water (in my mind anyway).
The civic was absolutely beautiful – it almost had a luxury car look and feel about it (much roomier, nicer looking interior) – and according to the spec sheets it boasts similar fuel efficiency, yet (oddly enough) costs a decent amount less than the Prius! I’m almost wondering if there was a typo – the Prius was listed in the 32k (Canadian currency) range, while the Civic was 25K range.
Anyway, whatever the case may be, I’d certainly be happy to own either one of them.
…
In unrelated (but still green) news, I must say it was nice to see so much green focus at the Oscars last night – for those of you who didn’t watch, “An Inconvenient Truth” won for both best documentary and best song (the latter was an especially impressive feat considering the handful of “Dream Girls” nominations in the same category!!). There was also a fun bit earlier in the evening with Leo DiCaprio and Al Gore. Great exposure when you consider the size of the viewing audience! Hopefully we’ll see many more great things happen as a result.
Technorati Tags: autoshow, gm, super chief, hybrid, prius, civic, volt, green by design, toyota, honda
Written by Bentley on February 26th, 2007 with
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