At the Tesla dealership in West Los Angeles On my Saturday CAR NUT SHOW on TalkRadioOne.com this weekend, we spoke at length with Ron Cogan, an old friend of mine from our days together at the infamous Petersen Publishing.
It was the Obama Administration's recent, quiet deep-sixing of $100 million worth of funding for an ongoing hydrogen fuel cell vehicle project which got me to call Ron. But naturally we went off on all sorts of tangents, from the BMW Mini E to the EV1 (Cogan was a lessor) to anything and everything "green" when it comes to cars. He knows his stuff.
I know you'll find it interesting, and you can find it here: http://www.talkradioone.com/2009/05/16/next-steve-parker-the-car-nut-live-saturday-5pm-pdt8pm-edt/. The interview starts 1/2-hour into the one-hour show but do us a favor - listen to the entire podcast and we bet you'll join us next week ... and the week after ... either for the live show (so you can call-in and participate) or the podcasts, which get posted within an hour of the live show conclusion (depending on how frisky I'm feeling after the show and how my computer's working).
Bob Petersen started his publishing company with a little mimeographed two-sided newsletter he called HOT ROD, which he sold for a nickle at car events all over Southern California in the late '40s. That became HOT ROD magazine and Petersen then started MOTOR TREND, CAR CRAFT, GUNS AND AMMO and all the rest and became the only billionaire I personally knew. This son of a So Cal Edison lineman from Barstow made damn good.
In 1992, Ron Cogan started a little two-sided newsletter aimed at auto industry insiders which has grown into Green Car Journal, probably best-known to the public as the purveyors of the annual Green Car of the Year awards.
Just go to GreenCar.com for all the pertinent info. And remember - we're on TalkRadioOne.com Saturday with THE CAR NUT SHOW and Sunday's with WORLD RACING ROUND-UP for motorsports fans. Both shows start their live broadcasts at 5pm Pacific.
Comments