Notable eco-cars (old & new) spotted in the wild: post your pics!

[War_Wagon]

Originally Posted by cptsideways

Negotiation is the next phase

Just make sure you do a better job than I do at getting a good price. My eco-car buying technique is based pretty much on this:



Good luck in acquiring the Insight!

[War_Wagon]

I live in a suburb of Vancouver called Richmond. There is a fleet of city vehicles, and a lot of them are Smart Cars, some old Cavalier factory natural gas cars, a couple first gen Priuses, and now it appears my tax dollars have paid for something I am actually glad to see them being spent on:



I have only seen the one so far, but it probably means that if they are buying new Volts, they will be selling off the old Priuses, I'll have to keep an eye out for them.

[darrylrobida]

Originally Posted by mechman600

My brother in law has seen this thing in the wild a couple of times:

Not really "ECO", but compared to a pickup truck it's probably pretty good!

Based on a 88 civic.

[vacationtime247]

Miss my little scooter : ( I'll go back to Indiana and get it out here to California someday, somehow.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I'm not a Ford guy, but your Tempo looks nice with that Mazda RF engine.

[War_Wagon]

Here's one for MetroMPG - the grand daddy of Metros -









1960 Nash Metropolitan, possibly the first micro car made in North America? Believe it or not, it has a back seat, as for who could actually fit back there - that's another question!

[freebeard]

possibly the first micro car made in North America?

Not even. The King Midget and, technically, the Crosley Farm-O-Road. make that look like a whale.

Oh, all the Crosleys.

[War_Wagon]

Crosleys make the coolest gassers! I wasn't sure which came first, thanks for setting it straight. I have always dug Nash's though, I saw a sedan delivery one once years ago and it was probably the coolest wagon I have ever seen!

[freebeard]

I had a 1959 Rambler American station wagon, bought and sold for $200 with 2 years of trouble-free driving sandwiched inbetween. I was embarrassed about it in college, but more lately I miss it (along with a lot of others). Front and rear bumpers were the same part. Left and right door-window frames (an aluminum extrusion, sort of a semi-hardtop look) were the same part. The carburetor bolted to the top of the flat head. The exhaust pipe clamped to the side of the engine block. It was a little bigger but not unlike my Type III Squareback.

That said, Crosley firsts:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Crosley introduced several "firsts" in the American automobile industry, including the first use of the term 'Sport Utility' in 1948 (albeit on an open model based on the wagon, not a wagon on a truck chassis); first mass-market single overhead camshaft (SOHC) engine in 1946; first slab-sided postwar car, also in 1946; first all steel-bodied wagon in 1947; first American car to be fitted with 4-wheel caliper type disc brakes in the 1949 model year (Chrysler Imperial introduced four-wheel disc brakes as standard equipment on Crown Imperials at the beginning of the 1949 model year, but they were not of the caliper type); and the first American sports car, the Hotshot, in the 1949 model year.[2] 1950 brought the Farm-O-Road model, a 63-inch (1,600 mm) wheelbase utility vehicle predictive of the John Deere Gator and other UTVs.

[War_Wagon]

If the Farm-O-Road was actually street legal, then it would be hard to beat. I guess back then you could get away with a lot more. Sadly, today I would get busted for driving an ATV on the road if I was in that! None of the police around here would believe that I didn't build it in my garage!