Another day, another Ford Focus

When Ford invited us to be among the first to drive an electric Ford Focus, how could we resist? Especially when it was so hot on the heels of our adventures with a gas-powered Focus. We arrived a little late, having experienced spectacle problems – the famous cat’s eye specs were cobbled together with a safety pin.

These ride ‘n’ drives are always a lovely way to spend an afternoon, even if there were no dogs allowed – even La Contessa. As expected, the conference room at the Allstream Centre was full of green products and cues, like the soy foam and recyclables used in making hybrid and electric vehicles. Lunch was saladicious and healthy, with some decadent brownies to keep us from feeling too smug.

But it was the guests at the event that demonstrated how the auto world is changing. Instead of just a gang of auto writers talking about gear ratios, chain drives and paddle shifters, there were mommy bloggers, social media mavens, and digital dynamos. There was more discussion about tweeting than there was about torque. And - there were even a couple of incredibly well-behaved babies bundled into knapsacks!

Following a power point presentation about Ford’s green philosophy, we were escorted down to the cars. Each car came with a driving instructor, to explain the controls and functions. And good heavens, there was lots of ‘splaining necessary!

My charming instructor was named Jeff, and we took along two passengers. To begin with, the electric Focus was darn quiet. When you press the ignition, you can’t tell even tell it’s on – the ignition light signals that the car is indeed powered up and ready to go. Great for spying on people and sneaking up on them, and maybe even reducing some noise pollution.  Bicyclists, however, may not appreciate this.

It was hard to believe the seats were made of recycled water bottles – while we have sat on water bottles before, it was mostly by accident and quite uncomfortable. But this time, our tush was quite happy. Jeff showed us where a butterfly would appear on the dash if we drove economically – that is, no sudden acceleration or braking. Try as we might, no butterfly appeared. Oh, well. Still, we like this trend with green cars – why not incorporate it into gas-powered vehicles? Getting drivers to operate more fuel-efficiently shouldn’t be limited to electric vehicles.

And at the end of our drive, we were tickled to be interviewed by CHCH TV. And they didn’t seem to care that our glasses were being held together with a safety pin.

La Contessa gets her Citroen on

At dusk, the last glimpse of day before nightfall, life truly begins for bon vivants such as La Contessa. For it is then that the Citroens come out to play.

How delighted we were to come across an impromptu meeting of the Citroen Autoclub Canada and their remarkable cars. Ah, the memories! Has there ever been a car as enchanting and practical as the Deux Chevaux? As a young pup in Montmartre, it was my daily driver. If cars could talk, that set of wheels could spill volumes.

Peering out of the flip-up window, my whiskers quivered at the marvel of design and engineering at my paws. From the outside, the Bauhaus-inspired curves appear at once utilitarian and stylish. Yet, they conceal an interior which can accommodate a French farmer with a top hat, on his way to market with a dozen eggs on his lap, driving across a freshly ploughed field. Oh, and it can also accommodate a Princess Johanna's Court Dog and her entourage after a wicked afternoon on the Champs d'Elysee ...


The 2CV is minimalism at its most chic, with a thousand other innovations to make it affordable, fuel efficient and easy to maintain. What else would you expect from the country that gave us moving pictures, the little black dress and the bikini?!

Later, we hung out with the Citroen Autoclub, who own a fleet of the French lovelies between them. These fellows know their vehicles, and we swapped stories late into the night. The adventures we have had with our beloved Citroens! Then there is Cousin Madeleine, who makes her deliveries in a pastel blue Fourgonette in Aix en Provence. I have been sworn to secrecy about her precious cargo and what goes on after the drop-offs. Mon dieux, others might think her quite bohemian but Madeleine is simply an artiste, mais oui?

Of course Citroen is a beloved French brand, and no less than General Charles de Gaulle himself credited a DS 19  for saving his life - when would-be assassins killed two bodyguards and shot out the tires, the chauffeur was able to drive to safety, thanks to the ingenious DS hydropneumatic suspension system. These cars were even able to drive on three wheels! 

And so I was not surprised that the latest French president, Francoise Holland, recently chose the Citroen DS5 Hybrid 4 to launch his term. He follows in the footsteps of predecessors Georges Pompidou, who rode in the marvellous Citroen SM, which was also used in parades by Giscard d'Estaing, Mitterand and Chirac. In 1995, Chirac opted for the CX Prestige and then later, the C6.

For centuries, the French have led the way in living and loving with style and grace. Let others be subverted and seduced by noisy engines that can devour distance in minutes... and for what? How bourgeois and arriviste. La Contessa knows that time is precious, but a grand entrance is worth its weight in horsepower.

La Contessa and the Ford Focus

Mon dieu, the things they expect from a simple chien. Just because I have a pedigree as lofty as the tour Eiffel, I am an expert in all things mechanical?

Let me introduce myself. I am La Contessa, a very rare Princess Johanna's Court Dog. In the old country, I am indulged and flattered for my blue-blooded link to the crowned heads of yore. But on this common continent, I must work like, well, a dog, to earn my keep.

And so it is that I have been dubbed the Designated Dog, and schlepped around in a 2012 Ford Focus SEL for a full week. As I was thrust into the comfy leather seat, I was mesmerized by the centre control panel – it could rival the cockpit of La Concorde, where my cousin Olga often criss-crossed the pond.

Such a luxe European ride, it took me back to the old days in Gstaad. I was almost lulled into a sleep, when – ach du lieber! Such bumps! Was I in the backlanes of the Red District? No, it was merely Dufferin Street, which was recently voted by the CAA as one of the worst roads in Canada. We slalomed our way around the potholes, rather than schussing through.

As luck would have it, the torture test continued. There are cobblestone streets in Amsterdam that are smoother than Lawrence Avenue, another title-holder in the CAA worst roads listing. I feared we would disappear into one of the potholes, but our luck held. Actually, it was not so much luck as the well-heeled chassis and suspension on the Focus, which has been tested for its durability on a Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium and Michigan Proving Ground in the U.S. Anyone who has driven in Brussels (dear cousin Sasha and I romped there regularly) can attest to the brutality of the roads.

Then it was on to my favourite park at Cherry Beach. Here I could examine the Focus from every angle, as was my job. A clever set of wheels, it was, stylish and roomy – I could accommodate a whole litter of puppies in the hatch! But mamma mia, the beeping back-up system hurt my sensitive ears – they really must change the tonality to something less aurally invasive.

And then - какого хрена! Where was the gas cap? I sniffed high and low but couldn’t find a knob or switch for the life of me. But my aristocratic snout (which can discern a fine merlot from 100 metres) led me to success! There it was, cunningly hidden behind a rear quarter panel.  Bravo, Ford engineers, you almost had La Contessa.

A light rain fell on our way home, but the rain sensing wipers – moving inwardly – kept our windscreen clean. It made me misty for cousin Manuel’s Benz, which featured the same wiper pas de deux.

It’s late now. The Focus is gone and I need to count my names. I remember there being 16, but I’m not sure about the last one. Now that I’m in America, perhaps I should cut down?

Commuting kills

Even a wheezy old beater can be fun to drive on the open road, under a gorgeous blue sunshiney day. But when driving becomes commuting, life behind the wheel becomes hellish and downright deadly.

Oh, not because you’re going to ram another car or mow down a pedestrian (or be the mowee), but because of the stress and strain of too many drivers behind you, beside you and especially in front of you. This charming infographic which takes nine pages to print out, claims that if you commute, your risk of a heart attack triples and in fact, 96,000 heart attacks in the U.S. are attributed to traffic.

This Gallup poll shows that the longer your commute, the more you suffer back pain, high cholesterol and obesity. If you spend 90 to 120 minutes commuting, you’ve got a 30 percent chance of being obese. Nice to know you can’t blame it all on Sara Lee, unless that’s what you’re snacking on in the car.

According to Statistics Canada, the average Toronto driver has a time-sucking commute of 27 minutes. And - apparently 82 percent of Canadians drive to work.

This state of affairs is likely to get worse before it gets better. It has less to do with infrastructure, the price of housing or the price of eggs than it does with human nature. We think we’re invincible. We’ll keep going until we keel over.

Perhaps the best solution is to have pop-up medical units along our highways and biways. Sort of like the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) popularized in the film and tv series of the same name. That way, there’s no need to call an ambulance when drivers inevitably collapse in their cars. We could call them M.E.S.H. – Mobile Expressway Surgical Hospitals, or M.U.S.H. if they’re located by an Underpass.

Doctors could make a killing. All those medical students that have been vamoosing to the U.S. would be flocking to sign up for front-line duty at a pop-up unit which of course, would be privately billed. OHIP would be loath to endorse this manner of facility – and what government wants to encourage deadly traffic?  

Some of us would finally be able to get a family doctor. We’d just have to learn to drive.

To speed or not to speed

In less than a week, the local transportation community has spawned two proposals for a change in speed limits.

The first, from Ontario-based www.stop100.ca, wants the provincial highway speed limit RAISED to 120 - 140 km/h. And the other – from Toronto chief medical officer, Dr. David McKeown, is to CUT Toronto municipal speed limits to 30 km/h.

Ironically, both are citing safety as a factor. Stop100.ca says that drivers travelling under 130 km/h, which they claim is the average highway flow of traffic, are a hazard. The reason is, this causes “other motorists to brake rapidly, tailgate or frantically attempt to pass.”

McKeown cites in his report “Road to Health: Improving Walking and Cycling in Toronto”, that pedestrians were less likely to be killed for every 10 km/h reduction below 60 km/h. Standard Toronto speed limits are 40 to 50 km/h.

This drew guffaws from Toronto’s venerable Sun newspaper, which plastered a photo of a horse and buggy on its cover with the headline “Slow and Stupid.”  

The real reason for the Chief Medical Officer’s report is to encourage walking and bicycling, which would generate health benefits and reduce health care spending in Toronto by $110 to $160 million. Additionally, costs associated with pedestrian-vehicle collisions cost Toronto over $53 million, and cyclist-vehicle collisions over $9 million.

Could our police department keep up with any of it? When to ticket, when not to ticket? Would we lose revenue or gain it? Which war is being fought here – the war on the car or the war on the cyclist and pedestrian?

Neither proposal has a snowman’s chance in Hades to get the green light. But we need to hear about them, if only to keep the conversation going. Road safety belongs not only in the headlines but in our heads. Let’s keep talking. 

The trouble with young people today

Remember counting down the days to your 16^th birthday? Some of us even skipped school to run down to the government office to sweat through the test that would bestow upon us that coveted, sacred rite of passage into adulthood – the driver’s licence. It was a heady symbol of freedom ... autonomy ... and independence.

But these days, that sacred rite could be on the threatened species list.  It’s true. Young people are shunning the driver’s licence for – shudder – a SIM card.

A study by the University of Michigan Research Institute shows a steady decline in the number of licensed drivers in the United States under the age of 30. There has been 22 percent drop in the number of licensed drivers since 1983. Furthermore, that decline is echoed across countries such as Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, South Korea and – yes – Canada.

Used to be, young folks needed a car to go to the mall and hang out with friends. Now all they have to do is visit their Facebook page or text them. You get to meet more people with an iPhone than you do with a Corvette. Sad but true. You may even get to impress some chicks if you have an iPhone 4S with Siri and some waycool apps.

The U of M’s study found that those countries where folks like to spend lots of time surfing the internet, young people had fewer driver’s licences rates. Could that translate into virtual contact being more important than actual contact? That's more than a little bit disturbing.

Maybe it's be the money. It does cost a lot to buy and maintain a car, and the insurance for a 16-year old male driver is stratospheric. There are much more reasonable – and green – alternatives, like car sharing, taking transit, walking or bicycling.

Possibly. But as Advertising Age noted, just as the automobile shaped a generation like the Baby Boomers, the internet seems to be shaping the Millennials. Perhaps they’re just smarter than we are – texting while driving is deadly. There are no WIFI highways.

Perhaps that’s a lesson that Baby Boomers could take to heart. We might live longer.

A woman walks into a bicycle shop ...

… and asks for a bicycle made for a woman. The kind of bike, she says, that would be good for riding around her neighbourhood, maybe some local trails, something that’s affordable and oh yes, very light. She doesn’t need 76 gears or heavy-duty suspension, won’t be participating in any triathlons or mountain climbing.

So the salesguy checks her out, and brings her a white ladies’ touring bicycle. The cables and fenders are white. It’s whiter than the china at Buckingham Palace. It’s so white, it hurts my eyes.

Yes, I’m the woman in question. Taking the white-on-white bicycle for a spin, I was  nervous – not so much about the belligerent cab driver behind me but getting grease on the pretty white cables. Nah.

Next bike shop, same story. This time I know to ask for a step-through bicycle, and explain that I need something functional, affordable, built for a woman like me. This salesguy nods and brings me a pastel blue bicycle with a wicker basket on the handlebars, which by the way, have curlicues on them. I point at a low-slung grey number which is more my style, and take it out for a spin. Alas, the price point is a bit too high and I trudge on.

At last I find a bike shop with women selling bicycles. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything in my price range. I tried – I really wanted to buy a bike from them. But I’m a freelance writer and as such, on a permanent austerity plan. It doesn’t help when they tell me I need a lock that would cost exactly a third of what their cheapest bike is selling for!

Finally, I did find the bicycle of my dreams. It’s a pale metallic blue Genesis with seven gears that takes me back to my childhood in a good way. It’s not too girly, not too technical, nice and light and drives like a dream. Bonus – it was on sale! And the cats approve. The straight-talking salesguy reminded me of my veterinarian, who has a somewhat abrupt bedside manner and shoots from the hip. Like my vet, whose main concern is the animal, this guy was focused on the bicycle. “Solid aluminum frame, lightweight, good value for the price,” he said in heavily accented English. I’m not sure where he was from, but the bicycle is from heaven.

It’s going to be a great summer.