Car as symbol of socioeconomic mobility

People in Spain ogle over cars more directly than people in Germany.

The other day I was at a highway stopover for coffee. Coffee obtained, I board my vehicle and strap myself in.

The buckle clicks. I turn my head and see a 45 year old man outside my window making eye contact. He points at our van with his finger, waving around the shape of it, and do a chef’s kiss. I return a salute and break open a smile.

I know what he’s referring to.

I have an unsexy van, but it is a Fiat Ducato, a workhorse of a vehicle. Reliable, ubiquitous (easy to repair), and comfortable to drive. The fact that our van had a giveaway pop-top was the metallic cherry on top.

Food, water, shelter, sleep, clothing. Maslow’s hierarchy’s basic level of physiological needs. At the very next level are safety needs, which includes:

1. personal security
2. employment
3. resources
4. health
5. property

A car provides 3 out of 5 of those needs (1, 3, 5)!

A curve ball: I’m part of the subreddit r/fuckcars (460k members) and from the car-hating crowd, there exists some good arguments for living without cars. Irreparable damage to health and relationships, death, lung cancer, the irreconcilable notion of driving to a gym to run on a treadmill.

While these arguments against cars valid, the ones for cars are also valid.

Cars epitomise mobility in the modern world. You simply get in and go wherever you want to go!

For low-income folks, a second-hand car affords a life in places with lower rent that are still within reach from major cities with jobs. For the middle folks, a car opens up a family to world of adventures in nature parks, sports clubs, and city hops.

Ogling over cars is therefore quite natural once you admit how much of your lifestyle is only possible because of one.

We admire other’s automobiles because we imagine what our life could be if we had one. A person with a 20 year old Toyota looks up at a Fiat Ducato and imagines endless possibilities.

The only thing I’ll say against ogling: stop before luxury. For rich folks, cars provide another way of differentiating themselves from the rest of us. That’s clearly the point of diminishing returns in the price-performance chart. For me, a Tesla is as far as I’d go. No Porsche, no Maserati, no Ferrari. I prefer my money for other things, please.

Other than those, I see no reason not to ogle over someone’s car.