My First Car: James Cameron - oil-hating, muscle-car guy

Oct 08, 2010

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Special to the Star

“It’s time to come clean. [When] I was going to college in Orange County, California all my friends were street racers. I just wanted the biggest, nastiest, gas-guzzling, high-performance engine I could get my hands on. Even though I was very concerned about pollution, energy was not really on my radar yet.”

Director James Cameron, 56, has always been a study in contrasts: the technology lover and the nature enthusiast; a trained artist and a deft mechanic.

Car lover. Environmentalist. He’s been dubbed “a man of extremes.”

Growing up in Canada, he moved to the U.S. with his family in 1971 when he was 17.

Cameron has gone on to write and direct some of the most ground-breaking, high-tech films of our times: the Terminator series, Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic and most recently Avatar — the last two becoming the highest grossing movies of all time earning a combined $4.5-billion dollars. All the while pushing the envelope on what was possible on screen.

But back in the ’70s, Cameron was more likely to be found under the hood of a car.

“The first car I bought was a Triumph Spitfire which actually got good gas mileage,” he says. “It was an old one, a ’63 — I rebuilt it myself. I worked as a bus mechanic and a precision tool-and-die machinist in addition to being a truck driver during those years, so I was pretty much hands on. I always had a wrench in my hands.”

The Triumph Spitfire (an apt name for Cameron, too) was itself pushing the engineering envelope in its day. Named after the World War II fighter jet, it was smaller and faster than its competitors, yet still comfortable. It also offered, for the first time, easy access to the engine with ample room to make repairs.

A consummate tinkerer, according to a profile in The New Yorker, Cameron’s gone on to own all manner of things mechanical: dirt bikes, motorcycles (Harleys and a Ducati) as well as muscle and race cars like the Ford GT and a series of Corvettes (he told Maxim magazine he has a modified ZR1: 650 hp with a roll cage and fire control system). He’s even owned a Jet Ranger helicopter.

Cameron says by the end of the 1990s he started to have “the dawning realization” about the issue of global warming. He’s come a long way.

“I made a lay study of it to the point where I converted my own house to photovoltaics — we (now) have a 48kw plant and we meter back to the grid.

“I drive a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which is the only seven-seater (hybrid) that I can find because I have five kids, and I put in an order for a Chevy Volt.”

Cameron says he’s very interested in the Tesla S model: a five-seat sedan with a 260-km range; priced under $50,000, it’s expected to hit the market next year. He adds, “I like what Tesla are doing.”

Visiting Canada to draw attention to the need for independent environmental testing of the watershed surrounding the Alberta tar sands, Cameron is quick to transition to the heart of the issue: cars and our dependence on fossil fuels.

A recent Scotiabank report said Canadians alone will buy 1.57 million cars this year — a figure expected to rise, since 8.6 million cars are over nine years old and will need to be replaced in coming years. Even if hybrids make up a percentage of new cars sold, demand for oil will remain strong. Unlike a Hollywood movie though, Cameron says there’s no magic fix, no immediate clean-car solution.

“You’re actually better off hanging on to your clunker with its lower gas mileage than trading it in for a new Prius, in the sense that there is a huge carbon footprint for the making of the Prius. Most people don’t even think about that. Now if you need a new car, and you’ve got to get a new car, and the last one has finally died at the roadside, then get a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid.”

Despite his bombastic reputation in Hollywood (notorious for his battles with studio executives sent to rein in production costs), Cameron’s tempered, informed approach may come as a surprise to some.

“The thing is, we can do so much more than we are doing in terms of converting to electricity. But converting transportation to electricity only makes sense if the electricity comes from a clean source. If you’re doing mountaintop-removal coal mining to fire your power plants to charge your electric cars, you’re defeating the purpose. It’s got to be part of a comprehensive energy strategy and that’s really what’s been missing — certainly in the U.S., and to a somewhat lesser extent in Canada.

“If you are still subsidizing oil and coal and not equally subsidizing green energy, then that’s not going to happen.”

He then frames the issue more starkly:

“So how much are we willing to condemn future generations to abject misery? (That’s) really the question we’ve got to ask ourselves when we’re driving around in our car.”

Quick witted and matter-of-fact, Cameron isn’t dogmatic — he’s asked himself the same question. His Ford GT was so loud colleagues thought an earthquake was underway when he pulled into his parking space.

“We’re at an unprecedented point in not only human history, but almost in the history of life. If we don’t do something about this at some point, this thing is going to catch up with us.”

Like his movies, Cameron sees redemption in technology.

“I have a love-hate relationship with technology because it’s what’s enabled all the bad things in the world to happen, but it’s also how we’re going to think our way out of this.

“We’re going to have to be techno-indigenous going forward. We’re going to have to evolve to a state of being we’ve never had before where we’re highly technical beings, but we’re living harmoniously and in a balanced way with nature.

“That hasn’t happened yet — but it can happen.”

Figuratively, if you are not your car now, you literally will be in the future.

Well, maybe that is a Hollywood ending.