Gas 2.0 |
| New Year, New Editor, and a Few Changes Posted: 03 Jan 2011 04:17 PM PST As we come up on Gas 2.0′s four-year anniversary, the site is reaching for new goals. For the better part of those four years the site has had one editor—Nick Chambers—but as the site has grown, it’s become impossible for one person to keep up with editorial duties. So, as of today Nick is moving into a new role as Site Director of Gas 2.0, and I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be taking on the title of Managing Editor. Regular readers will know me well by now, given that I currently produce the bulk of the site’s content. I'm not your typical environmentalist. I don't drive a hybrid or live in a big city or drink complicated coffees, but I do love green cars and writing. I’m a gearhead, in a traditional sense of the word. I started out wrenching on a 1969 Mercury Cougar, which I bought at the tender, impressionable age of 16. Eight years later and I still have that car (though it's spent less than a year on the road at any one time). My dad and I share a garage, and a love of old muscle cars. That’s just never going to change. I’ve driven cars made in Japan, Europe, and Detroit, and the machines out of Michigan always meant the most to me. I’ve owned a Pontiac Trans Am, an F-150, a Jeep Wrangler, and mostly recently, a four-cylinder Mustang that I drove 12,000 miles across the country this summer. Just ’cause. That’s the kind of person you’re dealing with. After high-school, I went to Central Connecticut State University to study English and Journalism. You’re supposed to discover something about yourself in college, but I pretty much had myself figured out. So instead I focused on writing, and cars, and through the college car club I was introduced to a wider world of automobiles. That was when I started to realize that the forty-year old engine in my Cougar was not that far removed from the engines used in my friends’ Audi’s and Subaru’s. There were four-cylinder cars that were getting only slightly better gas mileage than my Cougar. Why? I started asking questions. I started reading into the history of the automobile. I read about the Ford Nucleon car and Chrysler's turbine cars and how the first electric car was made over 100 years ago by Porsche. Freakin’ Porsche. I read about how many American cars weren’t made with even 50% American-sourced materials. Some American cars aren’t built in America at all. I was flabbergasted. Briefly, I turned my back on American cars and pledged allegiance to the Land of the Rising Sun, buying a Nissan 240sx and delving into that whole car sub-culture. Then I had a brief touch of infamy after an article I wrote entitled “Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage” went viral. Rush Limbaugh read my name and parts of my article on the radio. To say the least, I was misinformed, as were my sources, on many matters. However, I still stand by my final point; if you’re really concerned with saving the environment, buy a car that was built around the corner, not ten-thousand miles overseas. After my viral evisceration, I got angry. You awful, nasty, mean-spirited, self-righteous, holier-than-thou environmentalists. Who the hell goes on a Prius forum anyway? I read a lot of threads tearing me apart, digging up my online past (nerd alert: I played lots of video games until recently) and basically dismissing me as some stupid college kid. It pissed me off, even though they were right. Yet I stuck around some of these forums. Turns out making a car fuel efficient can be just as interesting as making it fast, or cool looking. Holy crap, people can run cars on French fry grease? That’s way cool. Wait a second, GM built an electric car in the 90′s? WTF? Why didn’t I know about that? I learned a lot, and I liked what I learned. Turns out, I just really like cars. I also like to write. So I basically just decided to write about cars with my life. Combine my two hobbies. I still know more about muscle cars than I do anything else, and so I get to write for the fine folks at powerTV, who write about all things American sports car. Around the same time, I managed to get another gig writing for this site, and I’ve stuck around because I’ve continued to learn more and more about green cars. Turns out, I really like green cars. Not just cars either, but high-speed trains, solar planes, and all that good stuff. It genuinely interests me. If you’re coming to this site, I’m going to assume it interests you too. You can bet that with all the other changes going on around Gas 2.0, I've got some big changes planned for the site too. • Car Reviews: I like driving different cars, and most of my vehicles are approaching 20 year sold (how is that for recycling?) I'm going to work on bringing you, our readers, new car reviews on a regular basis. I'm excited about the possibilities for 2011. If you've got questions, ideas, or even snarky remarks, just leave them in the comments section. Believe me, I read them all (even if I don't respond).
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from Gas 2.0 To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment