Careful! Car Sociologist in Action

I haven’t told you this before but I’ve had a side job since I moved over here. It doesn’t pay but it’s a lot of fun. I am a car sociologist and psychologist. I perform extensive empirical research on people, their relationship to their cars and their behavior on the road. I can tell you exactly who you are based on the car you drive. Because you seem to like the lists I have been making, I will give you a list of the five cars that struck me most here in the New World and the personality types and other attributes that can be associated with such cars. I’ll repeat what I always say: generalizations can be dangerous, so don’t take it too personal if it looks like I am belittling your car. You are not your car.

(When I don’t take the bus, I drive my car down the I-280. The views are gorgeous: around San Carlos, beautiful pink and white bougainvilleas line the highway and on some mornings, you can see deer at the side of the road. While I drive, I have plenty of time to listen to the radio and to do my side job.)

Toyota Prius. You clearly live in the Bay Area or in the Los Angeles Area and you have a good job. You seem like a nice person. You used to drive a big SUV, but you scaled down for various reasons. The future of Mother Earth is important to you. If you live in the Bay Area, you may have a BMW sitting in a garage at home. You keep telling yourself that you can’t sell it, because you need it for the occasional ski holiday and you’re absolutely right of course. And no, the Prius isn’t that pretty, but that wasn’t the question, was it?

Tesla Roadster. You are rich and still you care about the planet. That’s really admirable. You have other cars and that’s why you don’t mind waiting until Tesla actually starts building your Model S in 2012. It’s a local car, so that’s good too. Engineered and assembled here in California. Way to go!

Ford Mustang or other vintage car. You are a geek and you started at an Internet company pre-IPO and you cashed in or you are waiting for an IPO. You work at Google, Facebook, Yahoo! or eBay. I can’t say much about your personality because you tend to be a bit socially awkward. Enjoy your car though. But please not while you are playing your new games on your iPad.

Hummer. Aw. You aren’t exactly a lover of Danish design. You had a very bad childhood or something horrible happened to you and now you need this square tanker that glugs down so much gas that you can only drive 10 miles per gallon. You can’t see bikers or pedestrians through the tiny windows of your big rig and have probably some crushed bicyclists on the underside of your car.

Toyota Yaris. Yes, we know this car is environmentally pretty friendly, but I am sorry to say that you have absolutely no taste whatsoever where cars are concerned. No, ugly is not the new beautiful. And by the way, do you really want to get crushed by one of those Hummers and end up like a plant? What were you thinking when you bought this car, cheapskate!