The Inner Drive

When someone says “that’s a beautiful car,” I’m thinking to myself, “What are you looking at? It’s a hunk of metal.” What is it about cars that makes them supposedly attractive to people? Why are Corvettes allegedly ‘easy on the eyes’? Why are Jaguars aesthetically pleasing to the observer? Is it that those curved hunks of metal look better in the right places?

I can’t think of automobiles as works of art, I guess because I’m more utilitarian. I can’t get around the truth that the car’s principal function is to get me from Albany to Timbuktu, and then hopefully back. The degree of elegance to which it performs this task doesn’t come into play on my radar screen until I'm back home safely eating popcorn and the car's already parked. Points for style don’t work with utilitarians. It’s the cake, not the icing. Hmm. Not 21st century enough, eh?

So I suppose we’re talking about a piece of art that gets me to work in the morning. I’m artistically driving from city to city, whether I realize it or not. We’re a bunch of artisans rolling along down the highway, with one piece of art passing the other, in a kind of symbolic Byzantine nod to the superiority of one sculpted work over the less impressive contemporaries. Traffic, therefore, is a montage. And you thought it was just something that made you late for appointments.

If a car didn’t have wheels, then perhaps I could see it more aesthetically, but I’m considering too much the moving parts to put it in the same class as a Rembrandt. Cars are closer to being contraptions in the Wonka chocolate factory than they are to being bona fide museum displays.

So then this also raises the question: why isn’t a school bus considered attractive? Is it not ‘sleek’ enough? Aren't its midtones captivating? And if not, why don't they build school buses to be more visually appealing? Do other cultures look at Volkswagen Beetles as being stunning? Is stylishness all in the eye of the beholder? These are the things they should talk about in those car magazines, but they're occupied with championing design, handling and performance.

Many car owners seem to have a special pride about their hunks of metal. They act like it's an extension of themselves, that it fits into their persona like any other characteristic. They are one with their mode of transportation. Some mortals seem to enjoy working on their cars every day on the calendar, as if it’s some hallowed ritual that must be performed, though that’s antithetical to me. I would only work on my car in three instances: a) If the pope told me to and I were Catholic; b) If I suddenly no longer had 762 other more important things to do; or c) I was dead. Other than those, there’s no compelling reason to work on a car that I can see.

When you get down to it, a car is a shell. It’s a snail with a chassis. Deal with it. I hate to demystify whatever castles in the sky some of you may have built up over your lifetimes, but someone had to do it sooner or later. That thing out in your driveway is a junkyard waiting to happen. It has no soul, and it won’t take you to the promised land. Look inside it — it's no more than an ambulatory cocoon.

Motorholics keep their works of art well-polished, much like a trophy. Cars can be status symbols. If you have a car with a certain insignia on it, that can denote prestige, sophistication and wealth. But before we start frothing at the mouth, let's get back to the original purpose. A car takes you places by rolling along a road, and then with that accomplished it attempts to let you do so comfortably while having an enjoyable time. However, the road doesn’t care what emblems are attached to the car, or how much you’ve shined the tires. Those are just for show.

People look for excuses to use their cars even when they don't have somewhere to go. They'll just go out for a drive. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's an interesting development. Does this happen in other areas of life too, where we use something just for the sake of using it? Do you turn on a light just because it flips your switch? OK, then. You proved your point.

Perhaps cars have transformed more into mobile living spaces over the years. If we could get wheels under our house, might we be tempted to take it around the block for a spin? Are we finding ourselves with the urge to be in constant motion? One thing about being on the road is that people are always coming and going. Neither direction can figure out which is preferable, so they alternate. "We'll go this way, and you guys go that way. If you find something, tell us, otherwise when you get to the end, turn around and we will too." It's the law of vehicular distribution.

The anthropomorphizing of the machine is part of the industrial age's post-evolution vestiges, but it’s a phase we will hopefully soon overcome, because cars have done nothing substantive to deserve this form of admiration.

Have you ever wondered why cars come in different flavors? But the thing is that it’s just like M&M’s — all the colors taste the same. It wasn’t until I was 11 years old before I learned this revelation, which is also about the same time I stopped playing with cars. Coincidence? I think not.