Forget Rorschach blotches and skip the Briggs Myers HumanMetrics stuff. If you really want to know what drives a person (pun clearly intended), look no further than what they commute in. Nothing tells you more about a person than their car. Sometimes far too obviously, often times more subtly, people reveal surprising elements of their personality by way of their automotive purchase and customization decisions.
Today we’ll take a cursory look at some of motoring society’s more prevalent “signals” and briefly discuss what they mean. Read on and learn what your car says about you:
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1. You have Truck Nutz™ hanging from the back of your pickup.
What this says about you: You are independently wealthy and happily married.
How we know this: Because no one who sees that you have Truck Nutz™ hanging from the back of your pickup will ever hire you, do business with you, or date you.
2. You drive a Prius with a license plate extolling the virtues of your Prius, such as “Hi MPG 60,” or “Feefty MPG.”
What this says about you: You’re pretty hard up for attention.
How we know this: Because driving a Prius is statement enough. Ironically, it is Priuses (or Prii, as Toyota would have it) and Hummer H2s that are most frequently adorned with unnecessary, self-referential tack-ons and vanity license plates.
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3. You drive a Toyota Camry.
What this says about you: Nothing.
How we know this: Because driving a Camry can mean anything. You might have bought a Camry because everyone else does, or because you did some serious research and read a lot of good reviews, or just because you always buy Toyotas. Since about 3 percent of the cars on the road are Camrys, it’s tough to draw much of a conclusion here.
4. You have a “Baby on Board” sign suction-cupped to the window of your car.
What this says about you: You think everyone is out to kill you.
How we know this: Because you think that other drivers are so dangerous that unless you let them know about your newborn child, they will certainly crash and bang you into a fiery grave. We also know that you value the life of your baby (if there is one) more than that of your other children, your spouse, and anyone else you may be ferrying around. This explains the relatively slow sales of the “Great Aunt on Board” sign.
5. You have a license plate that reads “My Trans Am” on a Chevrolet Cobalt.
What this says about you: You bought the Trans Am vanity plate before getting the Trans Am insurance quote, which was more than your monthly salary.
How we know this: Almost invariably, if you see a vanity plate identifying a car other than the one it’s mounted to, the current car is of lesser value and far less interesting. Let’s blame this phenomenon on youthful exuberance. Some youngster commits to the plates before realizing that the car’s going to drain him (it’s always a guy) of all his cash. It is for this same reason that you see strange things like a new Mustang GT with a Domino’s sign on the roof.
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