pet connection

Cross-posted (sort of) from our DogCars.com blog …

I may have in the past mentioned my secret burning passion for L.A. Times autowriter Dan Neil. He’s a graceful, witty writer, which goes a long way with me. A long, long way. Even better, he won a Pulitzer Prize  (funny story in regards to that) for writing about such topics as whether there’s such a thing as “girl cars” and “guy cars” (of course there is!), which gives me hope. If an auto columnist can win a Pulitzer, why not a pet-care columnist?

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

This morning in the L.A. Times, Darling Dan writes about the Nissan Cube, which I simply cannot wait to drive:

One of the pioneers of the tall-wagon/multipurpose-vehicle idiom in the Japanese market, the Cube is, relatively speaking, vast on the inside. Consider that this truck-nugget — at 146.9 inches long, a foot shorter than a Mazda MX-5 — has more cargo space than a Mercedes-Benz S-class. It seats five in relative comfort over a wheelbase of just 95.66 inches and has enough head and shoulder room to accommodate a squad of Buckingham Palace guards, bearskin hats and all. This is the five-pound bucket for whatever 10 pounds you happen to have.

After years of dithering, Nissan has finally decided to bring the Cube to the U.S. market. Informed speculation has the first cars arriving in early 2009, after Nissan launches the redesigned Cube in the home market.

The car you see here is a right-hand drive, Japan-market car, brought over by Nissan as part of a multimedia project with Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute film school and New York’s Pratt Institute. The redesigned car will be different in some of the surface detailing — and it will almost certainly have the Nissan Versa’s 1.8-liter engine instead of the 1.4-liter fly swatter under the hood now — but it will still be smaller than just about any other wagon on the market, still keenly minimalistic and still a self-consciously arch and arty bit of clumsy-cool industrial design. Pratt Institute, indeed.

Basically, then, this is last year’s model with an engine you’ll never see. So why am I driving it? Because I wanted you, Mr. and Ms. America — if you’ll put down the xylophone of barbecued ribs for a moment — to look at the car of your future: smaller, lighter (2,530 pounds), slower, less powerful. Give it a decade. This is the car you get when you put the American market’s appetite for mega-space, utility and people-moving together with a 35-mile-per-gallon CAFE standard and $5- and $6-per-gallon gasoline. You get a box on wheels.

Boxes on wheels — like the Honda Element — just happen to have all the right angles (as the L.A. Times headline writer says about The Cube) for crates and other assorted dog gear.

This is one vehicle I cannot wait to get into. Nissan, sweetie … call me!