Opinion: What’s With Carguys And Their Stereotypes?

Eighteen-and-running may be long enough to have experienced certain aspects of the world in the eyes of some, and not necessarily long enough in the eyes of others. I can say with some degree of conviction that I’ve met my fair share of people over the years. I’ve met BMW drivers who do use their indicators, and Audi drivers who don’t tailgate. I’ve met Miata fanboys who aren’t hairdressers, and “idiots” who prefer CVTs over a dual clutch.

I’ve also met BMW drivers who act like their indicators are nonexistent, Audi drivers who can’t stop talking about why Quattro makes their cars faster, and Corvette owners who wear New-Balance sneakers. Since I’m taking shots at people, I might also take a shot at myself by saying that my dream car is a C6 ZR1 and I coincidentally own a pair of New-Balance sneakers. That, and I wear shorts and a t-shirt whenever I’m going out, and some say I act older than my age. No idea why, though.

That still doesn’t change the fact that I’m guilty of stereotyping people, though, so I suppose I should tell you all how I rather blatantly caught myself engaging in “car stereotypes”, so here we go. I was at this party about a year ago, and my parents and I befriended a wonderful couple who lived a couple of houses away. There was a small private concert that was on hold due to the rain, and consequently, the performing musicians were shifting their equipment to another venue. When everything was arranged, we were all asked to go to the next venue, despite the ongoing rain I wanted to make a run for it, but like every Indian parent, my mother objected, solely because our new friends were willing to give us a ride. Then again, Indians are Indians, and nothing would bug a South Indian mom more than her child getting wet in the rain. With that disclaimer, out, back to what I was saying earlier.

“Wait. Uncle’s getting his car!”

My mum exclaimed.

Given the cars that were present at the parking lot, I was expecting it to be one of either two things: either a decently specced mid-level luxury car (think E350d, or an X5 40d, or an Evoque), or something like a Toyota Innova, or a Hyundai i10. Not like he carried himself like a stereotypical luxury car owner anyway, so I somehow (stupidly) convinced myself that the car in question was nothing special. My patience was thinning out because I’d effectively ran out of small-talk, and as the new venue was a very short distance from where we were standing, the best decision I could justify was to just make a run for it.

And then, a brand-spanking new GLS400d pulls up.

Before I knew it, my jaw dropped. You see, second to the S-Class and the G-Wagen, the GLS was pretty much the flagship Mercedes that you could get on sale in India. In fact, the GLS, the Audi Q7, the Land Cruiser, and the Range Rover were pretty much the SUVs of choice when it comes to businessmen, and those who were politically affluent. Remember – it wasn’t the car that surprised me. It was the person. Why? Because surprisingly, he didn’t carry himself like the Mercedes driver that I thought he would. Like I said, I’ve met Mercedes drivers who can be either incredibly cocky, or incredibly down-to-earth.

Let’s be honest here – BMW drivers don’t use their indicators, Mercedes drivers are a bit cocky to some extent, any guy in a Dodge Charger is probably an undercover cop, Escalade/Tahoe drivers are probably racist white people, and Audi drivers tailgate like it means no business. Not to mention the fact that people who drive a Range Rover or a Cayenne drive it just for the sake of status, and if you’re driving a Tesla, you’re either a very woke millennial, or you’re some form of executive with more money than taste.

Having said that, the world isn’t exactly how we think of it.

The Psychology Behind Stereotypes

Apart from being a car enthusiast, I also happen to be a psychology student. Granted, I’m still a novice, but I can give you a fairly half-decent explanation as to why stereotypes occur. You see, psychologically speaking, a stereotype can be defined as a generalisation that can be made with respect to a particular group, with the aim of assuming that a member of said group would possess a certain set of behavioral characteristics. Stereotypes involve interpretations of the world around us, the cognitive biases that we hold to ourselves and the people around us are involved to a large extent. Stereotypes also fall into the category of schemas – which are, in the simplest terms, a set of rules and cognitive frameworks that we use in our daily lives. I’d also like to make a clear distinction here – all stereotypes are schemas, but not all schemas are stereotypes.

Confused? I’ll give you an example.

For all intents and purposes, let’s assume that neither are you scared of dogs, but nor are you someone who is overly experienced as far as dogs are concerned. Now, with that established, let’s assume that I mention the word “dog” in our conversation. When I mention that word, you would have an idea of what I am talking about, how a dog looks, how a dog behaves, and so on. Or, if I mention the word “restaurant”, you know what a restaurant looks like. You know what to expect as far as restaurants are concerned. Consequently, if I said something like “Le Bernadin”, then even if you haven’t heard of the place, you probably would have an understanding that I’m talking about this ridiculously expensive French restaurant that’s difficult to get into. Or, if I said “rottweiler” instead of “dog”, you’d think of this big, angry, dog that’s willing to bite your hand off if its owner asks it to. You see where I’m getting at, right?

Stereotypes are a lot more specific, while schemas are a lot more general. There’s a flip side to these examples though – if trained correctly, a rottweiler can be an incredibly friendly and loyal family dog that wouldn’t even hurt a fly. And, if you probably have the resources to read this, a meal at Le Bernadin (at most) costs only $250, assuming you don’t factor in a flight ticket to New York. Now I’m not saying that $250 is cheap. At the same time it’s not the eye-watering $1,000+ bill per person that you actually conceptualized it to be. In fact, I’d even argue that if you save your money correctly, you and I could probably even end up affording it should we wish to do so.

Wait a minute. If a prestigious restaurant like Le Bernadin is not as expensive as, say, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay or Nusr-et, and if rottweilers do indeed have the potential to become incredibly friendly dogs, then clearly, there’s a lot of things about how stereotyping works in the mind that are effectively flawed. I mean, there’s a reason why they’re called stereotypes, right? And that reason, ladies and gentlemen, is called confirmation bias. Or, in plain english, the act of searching for (and effectively, remembering) information to support one’s prior judgement.

Let’s face it – even though $250 is, in the grand scheme of things, attainable, it’s still a lot of money to spend on one meal. Also, both of us can’t deny the fact that Rottweilers look intimidating, they just do. All I am trying to say here is that the human mind is an incredibly flawed, yet, beautiful thing in itself, and it searches for things that appeal to it. If something appealed to it, irrespective of whether or not that “thing” was positive or negative, the mind will feed on it.

That’s how we become opinionated. That’s how we build and reinforce stereotypes, even if some of them are wrong.

Now, back to cars.

Okay. So Are Such Stereotypes Good?

In a nutshell, yes and no.

For starters, none of the hairdressers I interacted with drove Miatas. And yes, one of the coolest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting drives a Porsche Cayenne. In that sense, I just debunked two stereotypes that don’t apply to me. Like I said, they’re incredibly flawed judgements of people who we probably haven’t (and maybe never will) meet. An opposing argument for this fact is that an Audi driver did crash into the back of my dad’s car, and a lot of the bodywork had to be redone. Additionally, I have seen BMW and Mercedes drivers act like absolute idiots both on the road, and off it as well. Now, because these stereotypes are true as far as I am concerned, they’re actually somewhat of a good thing.

They’re a good thing because they help obtain a profile of people – it helps you to figure out whether someone into cars solely for the purpose of status, or does said individual truly love them? Another use-case to prove why stereotypes are wonderful are undercover cop cars. Believe it or not, whatever stereotype you have in your mind about an undercover cop car can actually help you avoid that undercover cop car on the road. Even if a car looked suspicious, nobody wants to get pulled over, right? Cars like a debadged Audi A6 or a heavily tuned Honda Accord are cool because they play into the stereotypes of each and every person in the road, until they smoke a supercar later. In other words, stereotypes like this are exactly why sleeper cars “work”, if you know what I mean.

More importantly, they are a source of banter for this hobby. They act as an endless arsenal of jokes you can use to make casual fun of people. I’d even go as far as saying that we would have lost out on so much automotive comedic material if stereotypes like “three STi boys enter a vape shop and go stututututu…..” didn’t exist.

There’s a dark side to it, though. But before that, let me give you a bit of an anecdote. I once remember posting a rather scathing rant about the current-generation BMW M3 on what was then DriveTribe, and one user commented, saying:

“People who usually talk s**t about these cars probably have never driven one.”

This comment changed my perspective on the whole idea behind automotive stereotypes and judgements. I was only fifteen when I published that article, and I had no drivers’ license. How the hell would I even know what constitutes a good car and what doesn’t? Of course, there are universal parameters, but I was clearly nobody to judge that M3. Like the author of that comment said, I haven’t experienced one.

Let’s face it, there’s so many angry automotive keyboard warriors on the internet. And whether or not it’s intentional or unintentional, there are a lot of situations where you and I even become “keyboard warriors” – people who just type things on the internet based on stereotypes and knowledge that they’ve gained over the years without actually experiencing something. I used to hate the BMW M4 thinking that it was an ugly car, until I saw it in person. In the past, I used to be an E63 AMG kinda guy. Now I’d take an M5 Competition, hands down. The point I am trying to make here is that my opinion about a certain car changed when I got to see it, experience it, and in some instances, even live with it.

Is the BMW M4 uglier than a Jaguar E-Type? Yes. Is the current-gen BMW M4 a mechanically better car than the 4-cylinder C63? Also, yes. Then again, we never quite anticipated the fact that Mercedes would drop a four-banger into an AMG-powered C-Class. There is just so much that we don’t know about a given topic, and to establish it as fact on a forum is something that I don’t particularly appreciate, and here’s why.

I believe that one can only criticize something if it’s either universally stupid, or if you’ve experienced it. Who knows, if Audi decides to make a 3-cylinder RS6 someday, I might even end up looking back at the 4-cylinder C63 and say that it was a brilliant car. There’s just way too many uncertainties with cars, and the world in general, to have a flawed judgement about something. Yet, amidst all this uncertainty, and the fact that triggered netizens can’t get over something automotive despite knowing nothing about it, there’s only one reality that’s certain: opinions keep changing, so do people, so do cars, and as a result, so do our stereotypes about them.

….because the man makes the car, and not the other way round!

At the end of the day, this is what it all boils down to. We make cars. Cars don’t make us who we are, and while it is indeed true that numbers, sales figures, and demographics don’t lie, they really don’t dictate us. There’s always going to be exceptions to the rule, and that’s okay. Everything has its pros and cons, and so do automotive stereotypes. It’s what makes them cool and annoying all at once, even though some stereotypes are absolute rubbish, if you ask me.

“If you ask me.”

That’s exactly the key statement here, and whatever I know is about me. Whatever you know, and more importantly what you believe in, and what your tastes are, are about YOU. There’s always going to be someone out there who has a similar taste in cars. If so, wonderful. If not, then that’s also what this makes this hobby wonderful. The fact that there’s so many different kinds of people that drive so many different kinds of cars makes this hobby a lot more special. It’s oxymoronic in a sense, yet I’ll admit this outright – flawed thoughts about flawed people bring this flawed world together.

And that’s why it’s so beautiful.