Championing Both Horsepower and Habitat

Ron Cogan's friends were worried. Was he flipping out, taking one of life's curves a little too fast? He was a California-based automotive journalist, a car guy gone environmental.

Back then in 1992, no car guy worthy of the name would do such a thing. Car guys were all about zoom-zoom and horsepower -- the more the better. We lived for one thing: the next fast car, the faster the better.

We'd gotten it into our heads that people who loved cars and those who championed the environment were irreconcilable opponents. We chose sides accordingly. We thought the short, barrel-chested Cogan, a man who looks like a Nashville country singer on his best days, was in our camp.

We naturally thought it odd when we heard that Cogan was hocking his house and borrowing money from family and friends to start something called the Green Car Journal, a quarterly publication covering developments in alternative fuels and the vehicles that use them.

Green cars! Was Cogan nuts?

I spent some time with Cogan at this year's Washington Auto Show, where I joined him onstage in a discussion about cars and the environment. Afterward, I asked him to explain his current state of being -- to explain it, not to justify it. I wanted to know how a man who spent so much of his adult life chasing horsepower and loving it wound up becoming an environmental guru.

To Cogan, it was a no-brainer.

"I love cars," he said. "I'm still a car guy. That hasn't changed. I'm doing this because I love cars."

He spoke about the first oil shocks in the early 1970s, when Americans were lining up at the pumps for gasoline that was in short supply because of an oil embargo in the Middle East. He experienced an epiphany. Without oil -- or with oil in short supply, or expensively priced -- the cars he loved so much were in peril.

Cogan decided to turn his personal wake-up call into a crusade for change via the Green Car Journal, a consumer magazine that has morphed into a major online presence at http://www.greencar.com and http://www.greencarjournal.com.

Today, with oil prices approaching $150 per barrel and pump prices exceeding $4 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline, Cogan is regarded as something of a genius. His Green Car Journal is must reading for anyone trying to understand the technological changes sweeping across the global automobile industry. It is one of the first stops, and certainly one of the most authoritative for consumers seeking cars and trucks that are the most fuel-efficient and least polluting. The Green Car Journal's "Green Car of the Year Award" has become one of the most coveted in the automobile industry.

Yet, with all of this, Cogan is reluctant to feel vindicated. He knows the American public too well. He knows his fellow automotive scribes too well. We tend to go for whatever gets us moving fastest. And for the moment, even at prices above $4 a gallon, that remains gasoline.

Cogan does not want those prices to drop. And on that score, as one of his most enthusiastic converts and disciples, he has my backing.

Currently high oil and gasoline prices are accelerating necessary changes in the automobile industry, changes that could prove to be the salvation of domestic car companies and the car itself. It turns out that Cogan was right all along. With our zoom-zoom, gas-guzzling mentality, some of which remains evident even in today's On Wheels column, which looks at the mightily consumptive Nissan GT-R high-performance car, we were racing towards oblivion, rushing toward the demise of the very cars we love.

Something new is needed -- something more sustainable. That does not necessarily mean an end to "fun to drive."

"We are looking at things that people will want to drive," Cogan told me. "We're not concentrating on science projects. We're looking at what will work in the marketplace, cars and trucks that people actually buy.

"But we're saying that there does not have to be a contradiction between cars that people can enjoy and those that are good for the environment. We're saying that we can no longer afford that contradiction," Cogan said.

Spoken like a visionary. And the good news is that his Green Car Journal gambit is paying off. It looks like Cogan will be able to keep his house.