Hybrid performers
Media star Michael Eckford gets behind the wheel of a 2012 Porsche Panamera S Hybrid
They are each a study in contrasts. Michael Eckford is a big city guy with small town roots; and the Porsche Panamera S Hybrid is an environmentally sensitive super car.
Put them together for an afternoon drive on a rare sunny Vancouver winter day, and you get spirited conversation blended with spirited performance.
After a quick photo shoot in Stanley Park among the totem poles, the longtime co- host of Shaw TV’S Urban Rush and recent full- time addition to Rock 101’ s Bro Jake Show is behind the wheel of the deceptively big Panamera with an equally big grin on his boyish face.
He’s adjusted the eight- way power driver’s seat, with a crack — “My wife is one of the only people I can share seating settings with” — fixed the mirrors and is ready to roll.
That smile quickly turns to an expression of puzzlement, however, when repeated jabs at the push- button ignition fail to ignite the powerful Porsche.
Assured that, yes indeed, the car is running, Eckford seems disappointed: “Jeez, I don’t know how I feel about that. That’s really strange.”
Yes it is. This being a hybrid model, and despite its ‘ S’ performance packaging, silent running is how this 2012 Panamera rolls, at least until the supercharged 3.0- litre gasoline engine kicks in.
“What a trip,” says Eckford as we glide out onto Stanley Park Drive. “That is truly bizarre.”
The same could be said of the affable and friendly Eckford’s rise in the often rough- and- tumble world of electronic media. Stranger still was the road he travelled to get there.
Born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Sechelt and raised on the Sunshine Coast, Eckford followed in older brother Sean’s footsteps and moved to Vancouver for Grade 9 to attend St. George’s School. Boarding there during the week and catching a ferry home most weekends, the small town boy began to appreciate the appeal of big city living.
“The city was exciting, scary, big, fast, all those things,” he says of his high school years as we head out of the park and into the West End. “And as a small town boy, once you get a taste for it, it makes it difficult to think about going back and living in a small town again.”
So he didn’t.
Instead, he stayed in the city and went to university, but after his first year he decided to save himself the grief and his parents the money, and set out to travel “and ended up working in construction for a decade. My dad taught me how to build things, and let’s just say I’ve done some the lousiest jobs you can imagine,” he notes with a laugh.
But there was a dream career he’d often think about as he banged nails and humped lumber, one that was born years earlier during a visit to his brother at university.
“He was volunteering at the Queen’s University radio station doing a show called Beach Blanket Blues,” Eckford explains as he pilots the Panamera over the Burrard Street Bridge. “I thought it was pretty cool, just sitting there playing all these great blues songs and talking every once in awhile.”
He returned for a followup visit a couple of years later, with Sean now working in news for a Kingston radio station.
“While at the station I went upstairs and checked out the TV station. They were just doing the 6 o’clock newscast and it was magic. More energy than radio.”
The seed was planted, but it would be a decade of hard labour before Eckford had an opportunity to nurture and sow that desire.
For the Porsche Panamera, which went into production in 2009, the seed was planted decades earlier in the form of the Porsche 989 concept, a four- door performance- touring sedan created in 1988. The front- engined, rear- wheel- drive concept never made it past the prototype stage, though its styling influence would go on to inform 911 models of the 1990s, particularly in the headlight and tail light designs.
But with the huge success of the Cayenne SUV in the first decade of the 21st century, Porsche had reinvented itself as no longer just a sports carmaker, so a four- door performance sedan to compete with Maserati Quattroporte, the Mercedes- Benz CLS Class and the Aston Martin Rapide, fit in perfectly with the company’s evolution.
Eckford’s evolution from hard hat to on- air talent began at age 25.
“I settled on what I wanted to do and that was TV, but I didn’t want to do any more schooling, so I volunteered at Rogers and ended up doing some interning at Global, following reporters around, that kind of thing.”
In 1997, Rogers started a daily entertainment talk show called Daytime, and Eckford, still volunteering, got one of four co- host spots.
“This is a very unpopular message to young broadcasters, but I worked five days a week on the show with no pay. I kept my construction job, slinging wood, banging nails, and did the show in the mornings. I loved it, and kept slugging away.”
His lucky break came in his pairing with Fiona Forbes, an on- air relationship that continues to this day.
Better still, he started to get paid. Well, sort of.
“It was an honorarium, like $ 25 a day,” he recalls with a laugh. ‘ Fee’ and I got along right away, and there was certainly a basis of friendship there, too.”
The show was still called Daytime, but when Rogers and Shaw did their historic asset swap in 2001, Shaw took control of the show, renamed it Urban Rush and vaulted Eckford and Forbes into Vancouver media royalty.
Then last year, he started filling in
for Loverboy frontman Mike Reno when out- of- town gigs would mean Reno would have to miss his co- hosting duties with Jake Edwards on the Rock 101 weekday morning show.
“I’ve known Jake for a long, long time,” Eckford says. “He’s just a great storyteller. If you ever get a chance to go out for dinner with him, take it. He will spin stories that will keep you from eating all night because you’ll be laughing so hard.”
When Reno received word that 2012 would see a major tour of Loverboy, it was only natural that Eckford slid into the morning drive- time seat full time.
“So far, so good. Feels right and there’s a great match between what Jake and I get to do every day and what Fee and I get to do every day.”
Many have voiced concern about the workload Eckford must be under, pulling the two gigs; he’s not looking for any sympathy about his lot in life. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I get to the radio station at 5: 30 in the morning, I’m outta there at 10, then I go down to Urban Rush and I’m out of there most days at 1: 30. Granted, I’ve got some work to do after that, but this is the honest to goodness first time I’ve worked an eight- hour day in 15 years.”
We’re now driving quite near the West Southlands home he shares with his wife and three kids, and finally get a chance to open up the Panamera. Finally, that sound. “The drive is, strangely enough considering this is a hybrid, very Porschelike,” he says as the growl out the four rear pipes recedes. “Once this car enters its performance band, you do start to hear that iconic Porsche sound, but not so much at the lower speeds.”
That said, “I do love the rest of the engineering, though. It drives like a real luxury sedan, but when you push it, you can feel it settle in the rear and really hug the ground.”
“You feel this when it goes. It’s impressive.”
Impressive. Sort of like describing Michael Eckford’s career.