A few years ago, I was re-infected with enthusiasm for cars. I came upon One Car to Do It All and found a new reason to obsess over cars.
I read Car and Driver and Road and Track as a teenager. I was excited by the agency that cars bring (who isn’t?). It was a fun thing for me to nerd out about: technical specifications , comparing feature lists, and of course benchmarks! There was also a slight bit of romance to automotive journalism, ostensibly all writers traveling the country (or world) driving neat cars in beautiful places, often quite quickly.
Now, I’m taken by the history of specific manufacturers and how older models of cars became the current models. The technology and coordination needed to produce the modern car appeals to my technological side. The shape of cars new and old is a fun subjective conversation (e.g. are exterior about form or function?).
Most people do not view cars this way. They are automotive pragmatists. They want a car like they want a refrigerator or washing machine. The car is an appliance. It takes you from where you are to where you want to go without drama, in a modicum of comfort. The quality of the steering feedback, the particulars of the engine, or the predecessor of the car from two decades ago are nothing. The optimization is all around cost of ownership and utility.
(For the sake of symmetry I feel compelled to write another couple paragraphs on automotive pragmatism. But, there’s really nothing else to say. It’s pragmatic through and through.)
A curious thing happens when my car enthusiasm interacts with pragmatic car owners. Some of them will encourage me to talk about my enthusiasm. Mostly, it seems a little awkward, as though they’re afraid I somehow experience cars in a better way than they do. This is totally not the case, I can’t even really drive a stick!
In a way its not actually that curious. Car enthusiasm and the cars enthusiasts own correlate highly with elitism, which is by definition intimidating. But it does make me wish I had a shorthand for “I drive this car because its interesting to me, but I won’t judge your car, now tell me what you’re enthusiastic about that I don’t understand”.
