Electricnick, The EV Revolution

Here is an interview we did with Paul Dexler, automotive journalist and, might we add, a walking encyclopedia of information on cars.

EN: Hi Paul, I wanted to ask what attracted you to cars and kept you up with them?

PD: I have always been fascinated by the automobile. My mother always told me she was disappointed that I said “car” before I said “Mommy.”  That may not be quite true, but it does indicate how far back my interest in the automobile goes. I can remember all of our family cars from 1936 (Oldsmobile 6 2-door sedan) on. I remember my mother going for her driving lessons in the instructor’s flashy ivory ‘34 Ford convertible. I remember my father driving me to grade school in his beat-up ‘29 DeSoto. etc.

I wanted to design cars, because I was always drawing them in my school notebooks. After two years of community college, I went to the Art Center School, then located on Third St. in Los Angeles, to become a hero car designer. Big downfall. After two years, I found that I could write about cars far better than I could draw them, and changed my major to journalism, at what is now Cal State Northridge. My first job actually writing about vehicles was on a motorcycle magazine in the early 1970s. While I no longer travel on two wheels, I have been writing about, and taking photographs of, cars ever since. I have always tried to keep up my own vehicles, if not always wrenching on them, at least being able to tell a professional where to wrench.

EN: What were your most important moments in journalism?

PD: Back on the motorcycle magazine, I put together one of the first multi-vehicle comparison tests ever published by an automotive related magazine. I also ran some comparison tests on aftermarket modifications, and published the findings. In one case at least, this resulted in a company that produced a very expensive throttle body injection system that absolutely did not work, going down the tubes.
Since, I have found that going into the historical background of a vehicle or marque has been the most interesting part of my work. At one point, I contributed a great number of photographs of cars to a publisher for a book, and was floored when the book came out with the publisher’s name on all my photos. The company was in GB, and I never received any compensation for the work, although I eventually did get the original film back.

EN: What cars have marked you more than others?

PD: It’s usually been cars that I have owned. My second car was a DeSoto Airflow, which brought me to appreciate the achievement of that model. When everyone was driving “bigger is better,” in the ’50s, I drove Crosleys, with a 750cc, 23 horsepower engine. Then I got a VW Beetle, and went through two of those, followed by three Karmann- Ghias, the last and best-loved being a 1963 cabriolet. I entered that in several car shows. I only got rid of it because my (then) new wife could not drive a stick shift. I traded my VW Microbus for a car for her, and traded the K-G in on a Porsche 912, which turned out to be a really bad move. In 1969 I got a Mercedes diesel, and started my love for cars with Dr. D’s engines. There was a long series of Mercedes after that, with the best being a 1972 280SE 4.5 that I drove for 75k miles. It had 70k on it when I got it, and after winning a number of concours, I sold it for more than I had paid for it eight years earlier. It was followed by my first Alfa Romeo, a 1978 Spider, which I sold in 1995, when I purchased my current Alfa, a 1991 164L. In the early 1990s, I was blown away by a car designed by Georgetto Gugiaro, the Subaru SVX. I couldn’t afford one then, although three extended test drives really hooked me on the car. Finally, last year, I got one, and I have been doing a “rolling restoration” on it ever since.
Its styling and handling still blow me away, especially since I can look out my front window and see one at the curb that is actually mine.

EN: How do you see the current trend in the automobile industry?

PD: That’s tough, because the current credit crunch and fuel price crunch are devastating the auto industry. While the devastation is temporary, the fundamental shift in what Americans want to drive is probably more permanent. Suddenly, light weight and fuel economy are becoming important to the mainstream in this market, pushing out gut-wrenching power and the ability to carry everything including the kitchen sink in the car with you. I think the manufacturers are doing their best to change with the times, the problem is that making a U- turn with a car company is even harder than doing it with the Queen Mary, and car buyers are even slower to realize that the turn is happening, much less than that it has actually occurred.

EN: What do feel about hybrids?

PD: Hybrids work well, but they are an intermediate step towards full electric vehicles, either battery powered or fuel-cell powered. The idea is to stop using fossil fuels while still keeping the joy and excitement of driving and car travel. The private car is still the only way to really see the country.

EN: What do you feel about pure electric vehicles?

Eventually, except for collectors and hobbyists, we will all be using some form of electric vehicle for daily transportation. See my comment above.

EN: How do you see the American automobile industry managing the current trends and mood in the car market?

PD: See my comment on trends. There will be glitches, but the basic thinking has been done. Again, U.S. car buyers are slow in realizing that much of the work has been done. I have driven some new American cars that are pretty nice vehicles. (And, some that still need some work.) But the industry is moving in the right direction, if in fits and starts. There are “car guys” highly placed at all three U.S. companies, and they’re helping the companies recover from the disasters like Roger Smith at GM, who damn near sank the company because he was a bean counter and not a car guy.

EN: What do you feel the future will look like?

PD: There will be an infrastructure developed to supply fuel to the fuel-cell electric vehicles. It will also go back to improving the overall infrastructure of the electricity grid. Power sources are needed, and I for one like the European model of small nukes providing it. Our problem with nukes here is that they are all huge, each one is a different design with no standardization, which leads to a host of associated issues. As far as further out is concerned, who knows what they will find by using the LHC at CERN to get at the basic energy of the universe. But we’ll all still be driving cars.