You are what you drive

The saying goes, You are what you drive. Many car and lifestyle magazines attest to the claim that the vehicle a person chooses may reflect their personality. I must admit I tend to act as though I believe this, albeit only in anonymity, of course—none of this applies to my friends who make unfortunate choices when acquiring a vehicle. So for the sake of the rest of this rant, let's take as the context that it applies only to people I observe randomly on the road. 

Let me get the yada-yada-yada disclaimer out of the way. I am fully aware that it is important to remember that "this is a generalization and not everyone who drives a certain type of car fits the stereotype. Most people choose cars because of practical needs, cost, or simply because they like the way a model looks or drives" (that was Gemini's gentle way of scolding me for my judgmental attitude). 

• Like you live in Alaska and you want your car to start when it's 40 below. You don't have to fit the stereotype to drive a Subaru.
• Or you need to move bales of hay through fields and mud puddles. So you have a perfectly good reason for having a dually F350 (diesel, ideally).
• Or you regularly pull a heavy trailer up a hill. So that V8 SUV with a 6L engine is just practical (it's also safer than a Volvo, at least for you, not so much for whatever you hit with it).
• And let's not forget that many people don't pick their cars; their cars pick them. It's a hand-me-down, or a roommate's who is leaving the country, or the deal of a lifetime on a perfectly good car that you therefore accept in gratitude, or just the only thing you could get for whatever reason.

So knowing full well that there are big holes in the rant, let me continue my car-racist argument. 

I am not just talking about the obvious "what were you thinking" cars. Today's Cybertruck, yesterday's Hummer—off-the-rack expensive statement vehicles whose only statement seems to be "F you" to every other driver. If you have an actual military-grade hummer from some Afghani surplus store, yeah well that's different, especially if you use it for anything other than suburban trips to work or Whole Foods or skiing, although if you also live in anything that can be described as a compound you are starting to scare me.

"You are what you drive" applies more strongly to doofus cars than to cool cars. This is ironic, because that's probably the opposite of how they are marketed and bought—enormous amounts of money are spent showing cars with cool owners in cool places, hoping we think "wow, I can be just like that," while buyers of doofus cars probably think they are just being practical. There are outliers, of course—the woody with surfboards strapped to it, or museum pieces like Bill's car, or the 65 Mustang Shelby GT350. The momentary "wow, cool car" may earn the driver a brief nod of approval if you are feeling generous. But the driver of a Prius is a Prius, and the driver of a white Tesla is a white Tesla.

In the late 90s, we experienced this thing called the dot-com boom (bubble, bust, whatever). It was a time when the valley was booming and so short of people that it attracted a Dust Bowl-like migration of people to Silicon Valley. Initially it was lots of engineers and CS types. When the boom was already imploding, there was still such FOMO that these dot-com companies were hiring gaggles of liberal arts majors from all over, like we'll figure out later what you are actually going to do. Their car of choice at the time was a Nissan Xterra, preferably in bright yellow. You had to feel sorry for these next-gen Okie history majors who came West looking for gold only to have it turn to dust after they bought their yellow (not gold) Xterra. And the car, that yellow Xterra now with a for-sale sign taped to the window, was an unemployed dot-com-buster. Perhaps a bit of schadenfreude, the seeds were there.

The Prius is another story. I take inspiration from Mr. Bean and his nemesis, the Reliant Regal Supervan, an iconic, cheap, and generally terrible three-wheeled small car manufactured in England from 1952 until 1973. There are countless episodes in which Mr Bean snarls at, competes with, tries to block in, or topple over the ugly little three-wheeled car. Disclaimer: Unlike Mr. Bean, I have not attempted to do any of those things to any Priuses. Around 2000, Palo Alto was taken over by Priuses, starting when a Prius was just a Tercel with uglier styling and a slower engine. It was in the days when the need for sanctimonious virtue ("I'm saving the planet; look at me, I recycle and drive a Prius") overtook "Look how safe and responsible I am." It was more than a statement; it was an infestation. 

Palo Alto used to be owned by Volvos; Carlsen Volvo owned the town. It's hard to feel anything, positive or negative, about Volvos unless you are Swedish and you have to pick your team, Volvo or Saab. The car just says "I'm a soccer parent in a safe car." This was in the days of Molson Golden ("it's not American so it must taste better") and Palo Alto was mostly still a moderately affluent college town. So it was a Volvo town. Until it became a Prius town.

It truly was a viral thing, herd behavior, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes you'd see nothing but Priuses at a traffic light, in every direction (all stopped, of course, because their drivers are not generally eager to move). I started playing this road game to count the inter-Prius interval (almost always less than ten). They were everywhere.

I took a strong dislike to Priuses (Prii?) from the get go. Dislike is not a strong enough word. Loathing? Some people just called them Piuses (without the R), but while accurate, that just didn't roll off the tongue right. It doesn't even rhyme with the actual brand. I developed the abbreviation AFP, for "Another F-ing Prius" when yet another instance of this ugly but practical statement vehicle insisted on road-bouldering 10mph under the speed limit while optimizing their instant gas mileage rather than the flow of traffic, with a smug driver staring at you in the mirror—after all, they were right and you were wrong.

The worst part was, they were actually not that bad. I discovered this when good friends bought one and let my parents borrow it. My parents loved it. My head exploded. Sure, underpowered and ugly. But amazing gas mileage. And well made (other than the headlights, which tended to pediddle at alarming rates). And a roomy back seat (not many small cars you can say that about). 

And then it was over. The herd dumped their Priuses and replaced them with Teslas, because greener. And Elon. Smart, visionary, saving the planet, started a car company in Palo Alto, built them in Fremont, our guy, our car. A new infestation. The entire Bay Area was taken over by Teslas. My local grocery store's parking lot turned into a Supercharger station. The inter-Tesla interval is usually zero. They are everywhere. 

There is no reason to drive a Tesla slowly; it's a rocket with an iPad slapped to it. It can out-accelerate anything else on the road. There is no reason not to start driving when the light turns green, unless you are watching a movie on that giant screen. Are you trying to save charge? But you have F'ing solar on your roof - it's FREE!!!!!! Maybe it's because many Tesla drivers are former Prius drivers, at least around here? That's how I explain why some drive like that, and why there was some transference of my AFP-feelings toward Teslas (especially white ones, for no rational reason). 

And now Teslas are on their way out. Old ladies demonstrating at their headquarters and dealerships. People putting disclaimer bumper stickers on them. People just dumping them. If you live in Palo Alto, chances are you know someone who works (worked?) at Tesla, so there were stories about Elon's quirks and temper. But we kind of looked the other way. After all, genius. Steve Jobs wasn't nice either. Now, Elon is no longer cool, and he comes with a giant asterisk; he might still be smart but his methods have become less appetizing in deep-blue Palo Alto and much of the rest of the world. 

But yeah, you already made him rich and the world is still getting warmer despite your noble gesture. Some have half-heartedly switched to Rivians, until they discovered Apple CarPlay doesn't work in those, so that of course isn't going to work. 

They still sell Volvos in Palo Alto. Maybe time to go back to boring?

But the corner showroom of what used to be Carlsen Volvo of Palo Alto is now a McLaren dealership. That's probably more appropriate, given the current cost of living there.