{"id":3725,"date":"2010-07-04T21:47:20","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T21:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3725"},"modified":"2010-07-04T21:47:20","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T21:47:20","slug":"the_energy_futu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3725","title":{"rendered":"The Energy Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.star-telegram.com\/2010\/07\/02\/v-print\/2310458\/the-energy-future.html\">Ed Wallace<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em> The winter of 1979 in southern California reminded people why they had migrated to LA over the decades. The daytime temperatures were in the mid-70s, and the LA basin&#8217;s summer smog had disappeared, revealing the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains.<Br><Br><br \/>\nAt Neonex Leisure that day, we were brainstorming the recreational vehicle of the future. At the time we built America&#8217;s largest RV, the Arctic Sun, a combination van\/pickup truck pulling a 55-foot-long 5th-wheel trailer. Now Neonex Canada had put our California division in charge of designing the company&#8217;s next Class A Motorhome.<Br><Br><br \/>\nEach of the other five U.S. managers gave their impressions of the future of the recreational vehicle, disclosing visions of startling grandeur. I was more flippant: &#8220;I bet it&#8217;s a Honda with a Coleman tent.&#8221; Three months later the Second Energy Crisis hit. We shut down our RV plant in two days flat, and I was back in Texas in five.<Br><Br><br \/>\nMy point is that, if you had asked every energy or automotive issues guru what the future would hold for automobiles just before the winter of 1978 &#8211; 79, the answer would have been completely different if you&#8217;d asked them the same thing just 12 months later. That&#8217;s what an energy crisis can do.<br \/>\n<Br><Br><br \/>\nMy joke about a Honda with a Coleman tent was weirdly prophetic. But my fellow managers&#8217; visions of million-dollar motorhomes would also turn out to be spot on &#8212; 20 years later.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed Wallace: The winter of 1979 in southern California reminded people why they had migrated to LA over the decades. The daytime temperatures were in the mid-70s, and the LA basin&#8217;s summer smog had disappeared, revealing the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains. At Neonex Leisure that day, we were brainstorming the recreational vehicle of the future. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,21,39,29,33,11,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}