Biomechanics

mail order bio-ride

By Brian Roberts

More in the Fall 2009 issue

Bypassing the domestic vehicle market in Canada: this is the story of how I met my foreign biodiesel true love.
I remember when I first saw her picture on a German website; those straight lines and blocky features...  I'm not going to lie; I wanted her. Then when I found out all the things she could do, I had to have her. There was no domestic comparison.  
And the best thing about her: she was ready - biodiesel ready!
So what brought me to this point, searching for biodiesel love on a foreign continent?   What was it about my domestic experience that left me so... unfulfilled?
If you made it to the Collective Biodiesel Conference (CBC) in Washington, DC in July, you're closer to understanding. The conference was an amazingly informative weekend that filled our biodiesel minds and souls. It also put a little fear in us for the future of the relationship between sustainable biodiesel and the domestic vehicle market.  
At the conference, biodiesel distributor Jason Burroughs and filmmaker Josh Tickell gave a standout presentation on the future of biodiesel in the evolving OEM market - "OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) & Biodiesel."  
If you thought that the OEMs were getting more biodiesel friendly, think again.  
The crux of the talk was that fuel injection and emissions technologies in newer OEM diesel vehicles are becoming less biodiesel compatible, not moreso.  A copy of the presentation can be found on the CBC website, www.collectivebiodiesel.org.
Hmm. If the domestic OEM market can be so cold to us, maybe its time to find some loving outside the dysfunctional relationship - an innocent cross-continental fling while they regain their senses.  They never really loved us anyway, right?
On the west coast of British Columbia (B.C.), one answer to the lack of choices in the domestic diesel OEM market has been simply to bypass it altogether. Although newer imports must meet Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (the CMVSS is similar to the United States' DOT system), vehicles fifteen years old and older can be brought in with relatively few restrictions.  
In Japan - partly due to strict insurance and vehicle inspections every two to three years - there's a relative glut of used, very cool diesel vehicles.  
This has led to the growth of a new import market specializing in some very unique (to us) used diesel vehicles, such as the Mitsubishi Delica. Since we're on the West coast, most of our diesel imports are right-hand-drives from Japan.
It makes for some interesting driving experiences. I've done a few double-takes as what seem like driverless cars pass by. A chiropractor with a sense of humor keeps a full-scale human skeleton in the front left seat of his Delica. It must be a great prank to have a skeleton driving past the costumed kids on Halloween.
And that brings me to my story of how I found true biodiesel love online.  
When my rickety '85 diesel Jeep Cherokee finally died, I needed a dependable 4x4 for environmental field work and for those get-aways to beautiful and remote places on Vancouver Island. Sure, there were a lot of gas models available, but we sustainable bio-dieselers just aren't the settling kind.
After laying eyes on her, I would never be able to look at a domestic diesel the same way again.
Sure she was just one of hundreds auctioned off by the German Army, but here in the Cowichan Valley she would be one-of-a-kind. A surplus 1991 VW Transporter Synchro (4WD) with a 1.6L turbo-diesel engine! And with the folding bed in the back, I could sleep with her!
In fact, my turbo-diesel synchro became two-of-a-kind when John, my fellow Cowichan Bio-Diesel Co-op member, worked with his father in Germany to import a pair of these beautiful green beasts.
The B.C. west coast is seeing more and more people bypass a domestic OEM market that doesn't offer them the diesel vehicles they want.
We're still happy together, my Synchro and I.  And I know its wrong to love an object, but this is a beautifully engineered, German, B100-ready object.
What is it about Europeans that make domestic vehicles all seem so... inhibited?

Brian Roberts is a founding member of the Cowichan Bio-Diesel Co-op in Duncan, British Columbia. Visit his group online at smellbetter.org