~ So what’s the deal with this S-Cargo thing anyway??? ~

Here’s some information about this vehicle gleaned from www.Wikipedia.org:

The Nissan S-Cargo is a small commercial van manufactured by Nissan. Its name was an amusing double entendre meaning both "Small Cargo" as well as "Escargots", the French word for Snails. This was because the styling of the S-Cargo looked a lot like a snail. The car was introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1989, and was manufactured from 1989 to 1990, with 10,600 sold. It has a small cult following, in spite of being criticized for looking "toy like". Its rarity, quirky looks and huge signage panels make it an attention-grabbing vehicle.

On his first trip to Japan in 1990 (and on every subsequent trip to Japan for that matter), David was amused when he saw the then new S-Cargos zipping around the streets of Osaka and figured if he were ever to move to Japan, this would be the vehicle for him!

Flash forward to 2004 …David discovers that Canadian government regulations make it possible to import cars that are 15 years old or older into Canada and starts seeing S-Cargos on the streets of Vancouver. There are a couple of companies importing them from Japan, but as luck would have it, David eventually finds a guy who imported one himself and was willing to part with it. On August 19, 2006 we welcomed a new addition to our family, a 1989 Nissan S-Cargo.

So what’s the S-Cargo Project??? Well we’ve had so much fun with our S-Cargo that we wanted to share some of this fun with you!

In the 2001 French film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain a garden gnome is taken from a garden and pictures of the gnome at various locations around the world are returned to the original gnome owner. This is sort of the experience we’re tying to emulate.

What we’re hoping is that you will take the time to not only build an S-Cargo from the sheets that can be downloaded here, but also have fun decorating it. Once decorated and built we’re hoping you can snap a picture featuring you, your S-Cargo and some interesting location near where you live (or perhaps take it with you on vaction) so we can visit these locations in our S-Cargo. Email the pictures along with your name, the date the picture was taken, the location and a caption for the picture to:

cbg@checkerhead.com

Then check back to the S-Cargo Project web site from time to time to see where in the world this little vehicle has been spotted .