Is it coincidence, do you think, that Aston Martins seem to come in 50 shades of grey?
more importantly The Cow doesn’t want her neighbours thinking that she associates with the sort of person who might own such a car.
This is status anxiety. It is not a good thing. But it means that even if we are not snobs ourselves, we still worry about what the snobs think about us, including what we drive. In his conveniently titled book Status Anxiety, philosopher Alain de Botton writes that when we reach adulthood, “we have to take our place in a world dominated by chilling characters, snobs, whose behaviour lies at the heart of our anxieties about our status”.
Which is a crap situation. And it can mean that whether we like it or not our status — at least our status in the eyes of others — can be informed by our image which, in turn, may be informed by what we drive.
“Image is important,” says Agee. “[Buying a car] isn’t like buying something for the house. A car is something not only our friends and colleagues will see us in day after day, but the world will see, may even notice us and judge us by it. This is important for some people who see the car perhaps almost as a fashion accessory.”
Then, of course, there is sex. Men’s status anxiety over this is not-so-discreetly disclosed by a recent American study that Agee tells me about. In research done by Truecar.com, women buyers were seen to be conscious of cost and fuel efficiency “while males buyers were completely the opposite, purchasing vehicles that were either big and brawny — for example, large SUVs — or chose a high-priced, highperformance vehicle”.
In his bestselling 2008 book, Buyology, writer Martin Lindstrom points to a Daimler-Chrysler study that involved scanning a dozen men’s brains using hightech machines called functional magnetic resonance imagers while the men were shown images of different cars.
According to a neuroscientist involved in the project, when the men were shown pictures of sports cars the scans showed that the region of the brain associated with “reward and reinforcement” were stimulated.
“And what is often the most rewarding thing for guys?” Lindstrom asks. “Sex. It seemed, just as male peacocks attract female mates with the iridescence of their back feathers, the males in this study subconsciously sought to attract the opposite sex with the low-rising, engine-revving, chrome pizzazz of the sports car.”
Here’s a thought: is it coincidence, do you think, that Aston Martins seem to come in 50 shades of grey? CARS AREN’T my thing. I take the train, sometimes the bus. But then again, when I last bought a car — in 2005 — I picked one with alloy wheels, leather seats and tinted windows as well as airbags and okay fuel economy. So I’m hardly immune to what Findlay calls “all those things that sound very superficial”.
The question — no laughing, please — is just how superficial am I? The editor decided on an experiment. I would drive three very different kinds of car — a tiny cheapy, an environmentally friendly vehicle and a sports car — to see if I felt any different — and whether I got the impression people felt any different about me. The first car was a tiny Kia Picanto, the first sub-$19,000 car to score a maximum five stars in the latest Australasian New Car Assessment Programme safety tests. The second, released here this month, was a Holden Volt, not a hybrid but an electric car with a supplementary petrol engine. The third would be, I could barely contain my excitement, the Aston Martin Rapide. The $18,590 Picanto I would have for five days, the $85,000 Volt I would help drive up north and back again with a small group of motoring writers and the third, an $329,000 Aston Martin, I would have for less than two hours (this, as you can see, is a hierarchy of access).
I would love to defy prediction.
I would love to challenge expectation. But I cannot.
While the Picanto fulfils its ambition of being small, safe and thrifty, it was always going to come in third place — even before someone saw a photo of me standing next to it and commented, with a little too much relish, I thought, “not very Skyfall”.
The Volt is, undeniably, an incredible piece of technology. You can plug it in the wall at home and charge it up (for less than $3), motor for up to 87km on battery power (more than enough to commute in Auckland) and, when the battery power runs out, keep on motoring for another 600km courtesy of the petrolpowered generator. It has slick American lines, the dashboard looks like it’s from the space shuttle, it drives like it means business, and I’m sure it will make the few wealthy greenies who can afford to buy one very happy indeed. Yet it couldn’t be my number one — not after I pushed the starter on the Aston Martin Rapide.
Driving the Aston to Bastion Point to photograph it made me feel different all right — it made me feel like the centre of attention. It is like the adjective “headturning” was invented for it. People stared when I sat at the lights. People stopped and turned to watch me drive past. And, when I parked it atop Bastion Point, tourists took photos — including one who got his wife to pose in front of it.
I won’t lie to you: I loved it.