Nissan’s Leaf may be cruise-worthy

Published 10:15 pm Tuesday, May 25, 2010

For $99, you can save a spot in a virtual line of people waiting to buy a Leaf.

The fee isn’t a down payment on Nissan’s new electric car. It’s the cost of putting your name on a list of potential buyers. And it’s refundable if there aren’t enough plug-in cars to go around when the Leaf model first hits Nissan dealerships, probably in December.

I don’t bike to work. I don’t have a worm bin or even a compost pile.

Still, I find myself searching online for information about electric cars as sickening news of the BP oil disaster drags on. Day after day of seeing the Gulf of Mexico and its shores fouled is enough — finally — to push even reluctant environmentalists to consider becoming more responsible for a cleaner, greener world.

“We’ve had a huge response,” said William Love, a Leaf specialist at Performance Nissan in south Everett. The online-only reservation system began in April.

Love had the chance to drive a Leaf earlier this year at a Nissan event at Qwest Field. “It’s really an amazing little car,” he said. “You don’t hear an engine at all. There’s a lot of room, the batteries are along the floor boards. It’s a commuter and errand-runner.”

The Leaf will go about 100 miles on a full charge, which takes eight hours. Speed tops out at 90 miles per hour. With expected tax credits, the car’s cost will be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range. A home charging station will be sold separately, for about $2,100, Love said.

It’s all progress that can’t come soon enough. Yet for those of us who came of age when big, showy, gas-guzzling American cars were king, it’s progress that comes with a wistful sense of loss.

Classic car fanciers will be in downtown Everett this weekend for Cruzin’ to Colby, a free showcase of chrome and finned beauties from the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Drivers will parade their stuff at a “controlled cruise” from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday. The cruise will be followed by a Show ’N Shine event from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday.

Jack O’Donnell, an Everett historian and retired teacher, drove his 1968 red Chevy Impala convertible at last year’s Cruzin’ Colby. “I bought it brand new and cruised Colby at age 23,” said O’Donnell, who likened his younger self to the cruising John Milner character in the film “American Graffiti.”

“They could have filmed it on Colby,” said O’Donnell, who compiles The Herald’s Seems Like Yesterday column.

In 1999, he and his brother Larry O’Donnell took the 1968 classic, with its V-8 engine rebuilt, on a trip covering the famed Route 66 from Michigan to the Pacific Ocean. A 1963 graduate of Everett High School, Jack O’Donnell said he remembers his early years as “a time of complete innocence.”

“Oh, what a time. And oh, I followed those cars,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to see the new models.”

One of the best books I’ve read in the past few years is Bill Bryson’s “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid,” a funny memoir of childhood in the 1950s. We who were lucky enough to have experienced middle-class American childhood in the mid-20th century knew a time when everything seemed unlimited — dreams, resources, even the size of the back seat of your dad’s car.

What we know now is that there are limits. Money is tight. Jobs are hard to find. And the environmental cost of fueling dreams built in the last century is way too high.

I don’t know much about the plug-in technology that makes a Leaf go. It’s a start, though. I can see putting my name on that list, if only for a car to get around town.

Man-oh-man, though, wouldn’t it be fun to borrow that ’68 red convertible?

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.