car + greenwash = carwash?

Ford Escape Hybrid Brochure greenwash
(click on the image for larger versions)

Ford Canada really have excelled themselves with the Escape Hybrid. It’s a great big huge SUV, but that doesn’t matter because it’s one of those lovely clean hybrids. Yes, that’s right, you can feel good about driving it, because you’re only supporting repressive regimes a bit.

But the best bit is in the writeup (emphasis mine):

Giving back to the environment doesn’t just stop at printing this advertisement on recyclable paper. …

C’mon guys, it’s just a regular car glossy. All paper is recyclable. If you’d have printed it on recycled hemp paper using vegetable inks, maybe, just maybe, you’d be giving something back. But this is just a sop to the car-besotted consumer.

As they go on to say: We keep thinking about the environment. There’s a huge gap between just thinking, and actually doing something useful.

biggest vee-hickle ever

huge_lesabre.jpg
Seems it’s a big weekend down at the rental lot. This Buick LeSabre — approximately the size of Clackmannanshire, for Scottish readers — is all they had left.

Oh well, at least I’ll be stylin’ on the way to the Rennfest, and at the airport to meet Catherine. Or, since it’s about the size of a Zil, I guess I could be Stalin.

Menace on the Roads

Well, they’re letting me drive motor vehicles now. Today I exchanged my UK driving licence for an Ontario driver’s licence (We like our gerunds in the UK). I didn’t know this, but Ontario signed a reciprocity agreement with the UK back in March. I seriously thought I’d have to start from level one — yay!

Though I’ve exchanged a document that was valid until I’d be 70 for one that’s valid only for the next five years, I don’t mind too much. The UK driving licence is a little photocard which has to presented along with a big dumb paper “counterpart licence”. I’m not sad to see that go.

Okay, so now I’m allowed to drive, what colour should my monster truck be?