WHY DO WE LOVE CARS?
March 20th, 2008, Features
What is it about automobiles that we love so much? Why will an exhaust note cause us to reel around like a gunfighter in a spaghetti western and instantly recognize what kind of car made that glorious, symphonic noise before we even see it? Why will we spend countless hours cleaning, polishing, waxing and detailing our cars to simply stand and stare at them. Grabbing a cold one, ( from our little garage frig) our favorite garage stool, our drool bowl and gleaming at the work we had just done as if it were the first time we saw….well-you know. Why on God’s green earth would we get up at 4:30 in the morning to watch a car race?
Perhaps it’s a mechanical thing. Maybe we just love the intricacy of a great car, rather like that of a fine watch. Perhaps, to us, it is art; rolling art. For crying out loud, you cannot drive a Monet! Great artist, yes, but compared to Pininfarina, Bertone, Dietrich, Darrin, and Earl……..puleeeeaze!
Perhaps it is simply something that we are born with, a sixth sense if you will, for all things with four wheels and glorious bodywork. If you are a car guy, (yes ladies that includes you as well) chances are you have been since you can remember; right? We called out the names of cars to our bewildered parents, we knew the models, the engines they had, how much horsepower. We read car magazines, not comics. We drew cars, we had car posters, played with car models and even mimicked the appropriate exhaust tones. THEY WERE DIFFERENT DAMN IT! How many of us still have those toys? How many of us can still emulate the exhaust note of a Healy? Steve, can you still do a 240Z? ;>)
Then there is racing. Some of us having the good fortune to do it, or having done it. The ability to dance with a 3000 lb. partner in a well choreographed waltz and when done well, all played in slow motion; MAGIC! Even if we don’t or haven’t raced, watching the best drivers in the world at their craft is breathtaking to car people. Simply knowing and understanding that driver and car have somehow become one, a relationship between the human and the mechanical, communication between two opposites if you will; fantastic!
What draws us can also be as simple as dawn or dusk reflecting from the sculpted fender of an E-Type or the bonnet of….hell almost anything.
Cars are something that we just become lost in and wonderfully so. On occasion we have the good fortune to own some of these incredible machines, on others it is good enough just to see some of our favorites; and dream.
Happy dreams,
O.C.C.E
March 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
You talk good!
I must agree. Like Versache’ to Paris Hilton or being tacky to Omarosa, all the items you mention to a car guy is just something we get. Call it Autoporn, call it an addiction or call it pointless if that is how you see it. But realize that to us car guys, the sound of a GT3 or Gallardo under full power as it goes up threw the gears is just, well, all you car guys insert your favorite in appropriate euphemism here.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
The symphony of sound referred to in this article is how I would describe it. Not a Mozart melody, but a symphony composed by those composers like Harley Earl with the American Corvette, or Mr. Ferrari, or Dr. Porsche, or any number of players who have signed their names onto the nameplate of an automobile of legend. Since I was a boy, I’ve yearned to have all those cars. Not just to drive them, which was of course the main object of my obsession, but to also simply wrap them around me. To surround myself with their posture, their look, and yes, their sound. That sound that would make me feel like I was a real ‘driver’s driver’ and that sound that would make any young girl smile and turn her head. Yes, cars are as close to an aphrodisiac as we men will ever be able to find. But what a great way to spend the day or night driving around ‘your’ girl.