It’s an assignment operator for ‘Conditional Assignment’
See here -> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming/Syntax/Operators
Conditional assignment:
x = find_something() #=>nil
x ||= "default" #=>"default" : value of x will be replaced with "default", but only if x is nil or false
x ||= "other" #=>"default" : value of x is not replaced if it already is other than nil or false
Operator ||= is a shorthand form of the expression:
x = x || "default"
EDIT:
After seeing OP’s edit, the example is just an extension of this, meaning:
car = method_1 || method_2 || method_3 || method_4
Will assign the first non-nil or non-false return value of method_1, method_2, method_3, method_4 (in that order) to car
or it’ll retain its old value.