From the moment I put my foot on the gas… uhmm… fuel pedal of the ‘ethanol car’, the flex-fuel Ford Fiesta imported by Petrojam, I knew it would be a great week.

What I didn’t know was how much of a stir the car would create everywhere I went.

Sure the car has emblazoned across both sides ‘100% ethanol in my tank’, the Petrojam logo and photos of sugar cane on the back bumper and side panels, but I didn’t anticipate the barrage of questions I fielded all last week.

They began in traffic last Friday on Marcus Garvey Drive, not quite a minute after I had pulled out of the Petrojam parking lot.

“Tell me something, it drive like a car?” a man in a white Toyota station wagon yelled.

“So far,” I answered.

At the traffic lights near the Tinson Pen aerodrome a 20-something year-old man in an Acura with a loud muffler pulled up alongside me. He was kinda cute, so I put down the window and leaned a little to the side.

“Looking good,” he said.

I smiled.

“What’s the mileage like?”

I mumbled.

“It sexy still. Me woulda drive one, although the exhaust kinda smells like a rum factory,” he added before speeding off.

Most people wanted to know how much fuel the car burned, whether it had the same amount of power, and where ethanol could be sourced.

“So my girl, what you do, drive with a length of cane in the car with you?” quipped my co-worker Lance.

My friends were merciless.

“Let me taste it nuh?” pleaded a rum-drinking pal. “I promise I won’t drink out you gas!”

The car even earned its own nickname, the ‘Rum Runner’, courtesy of my parring ‘P’ Damian. He was also guilty of delivering the corniest (or cane-iest) comment of the week by far.

“I bet when we go out drinking and the ‘q’ goes missing, we’ll just see the car peeling out and hear Vrruum, Vrrruuum!”

On Thursday night, I loaded the car with my colleagues Brandon Allwood and Roland Henry and decided to give the car a highway test. We popped an OutKast CD into the in-deck player, and bumped along in traffic from the Observer on Beechwood Avenue south to where Hagley Park Road becomes Marcus Garvey Drive.

Starting from the new Portmore toll road, we followed the route all the way around the Dyke road and reconnected with Highway 2000.

“Take time nuh,” Brandon cautiously warned shortly after we touched onto the toll road.

I looked down at the speedometer. 140 km per hour it said, and I wasn’t even pressing hard on the accelerator.

“Wow!” I thought. “What happens if I press a little harder?”

I did, and within 20 minutes we were in Palmer’s Cross, Clarendon.

When we got to May Pen, I stopped right in front of the clock, and in seconds a small group gathered around the car.

The questions were the same.

“What is ethanol?

“It can drive with regular gas?”

“What if you run out, you can put John Crow Batty in there?”

A blue seam police officer approached the group, but instead of instructing me to move from the no-parking zone, he added his questions to the lot.

“When you think the government will start bringing this in? ‘Cause it really seem better than the gas,” he said after we chatted for a while.

Seventeen minutes later, we were turning back onto the Dyke road in Portmore.

Back in Kingston, a woman driving a massive Ford F150 pick-up pulled up beside me, her V-8 engine booming.

“I want one of those! You know what I spend in gas for this?” she wailed. The vehicle she was driving was borrowed, she confessed, but was clear about how she felt about it.

“I wouldn’t take one of these, all if I get it free!” she declared of the F150.

At home, as I cleared the car (reluctantly) to prepare for its Friday afternoon return, a neighbour stopped me in the parking lot of our apartment building.

“All these vehicles should be banned, even this one,” he said, pointing to his own diesel pick-up. For what was the last time before I returned the car, I went through my now well-rehearsed ‘Ethanol/flex-fuel car’ spiel, even opening the hood to show him the engine.

“Of course I would get one! Yes man, if it drive like a car, costs less in gas and doesn’t mash up the environment, then of course I’d spend my money on one,” he added.

Vrruum Vrruum.

Flex specs

Make: 2006 Ford Fiesta Trail

Model: 5-door hatchback; seats 4 adults

Engine: 1600 cc Flex Fuel with 45-litre fuel tank

Fuel type: ethanol, or gas/ethanol blend (up to 25% ethanol, 75% gas)

Mileage: 8 km/litre city; 11 km/litre highway

Top speed: 200 kmph

Other: power steering; power windows; in dash CD/MP3 player with am/fm radio; manual transmission ONLY; vehicle stabilisation system; synthetic leather seats; equipment rack & running board.