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Location: Midwesterner living in California (previously East Coast)
296 posts, read 438,193 times
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LA and Atlanta leap out to me as particularly egregious on this front. Dallas and maybe Miami would also be honorable mentions to this embarrassing list.
It's both comical and sad seeing people who are basically living paycheck to paycheck (with less than $1,000 in savings), driving expensive cars on lease.
It demonstrates a failure in basic financial literacy and also shows how shallow materialism is winning over the masses.
This. I might add Houston, Nashville, and Charlotte. To be fair that type of mindset can be found anywhere. There are no places completely void of insecure people with that type of transparent mindset, but in my experience it’s particularly engrained in the Sunbelt’s culture.
My instant answer to the question was Detroit - obviously (after you read my answer).
But when I looked at the poll list I could see why other people would answer the "what do you drive" question a bit differently than I did.
I live in Metro Detroit, which means car manufacturers everywhere. For the older generations (in their 70's +) it's still a big deal if you drive an American car. (It seriously used to matter what kind of car a political candidate drove.) But less so with the younger ones - it's really okay to drive your Japanese imports. (and we all realize that most autos these days have a mixture of foreign/domestic parts/manufacture, so it's not as clear cut as it was in the past whether you are actually driving an "American" or an "import" automobile.)
There's also an employee culture "I work for Ford, I drive a Ford" is a common license plate holder here - and getting your "friends/family" employee discounts for one of the big three. And a lot of car people love to attend the Detroit auto show every January. "What do you drive" and "do you have a union sticker" on the vehicle are important social markers.
But there are two camps - there are the people who are into "status" high-end cars, but then there are those who are loyal to one of the big 3 (GM, Ford, Fiat/Chrysler). And it's not too surprising to find people who fit into both groups. Because car people love well made cars - and the luxury brands do have a lot going for them, if you are into that sort of thing and can afford it. But for the most part, a lot of people in the region are brand loyal to their brand - even if the brand makes horrible cars - because it's the company where they, their family members and/or friends have worked.
A lot of times, it's the "new rich" where you find the question "what do you drive" as being more associated to what luxury "status" brand vehicle (BMW, Mercedes, Audi, etc) you are driving.
We went down to Toledo last summer and because they are a big Jeep Manufacturer, they it happened to be Jeep fest weekend and the downtown area was just packed with people celebrating the Jeep and all of its glory. A lot of people love their Jeeps. I really had no idea this was a thing until last summer.
So, I just had to go with the Midwest.
You go to other places in America and they generally don't care what kind of car you drive.
However, I can understand why the people who said California gave the answers that they did. That makes a lot of sense too!
Location: Miami (prev. NY, Atlanta, SF, OC and San Diego)
7,409 posts, read 6,550,878 times
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South Florida and SoCal would be my two top choices. BMW’s, Lexus and Jaguars in these two regions are nothing particular and the equivalent of VW Passat’s or Honda Accords elsewhere.
Not uncommon to see a couple of dozen, sometimes more, Lambos, Ferrari’s, McLarens, Maseratis, Aston Martins, Bentley’s, Mercedes AMG GT’s, etc etc on a daily basis in these 2 regions.
Some of these high end exotics are part of a stable of cars one owns—one usually isn’t driving only a Ferrari, and nothing else, nor driving it 15-25K miles/year. In addition, one really has money to waste when they spend an extra $20K on an exhaust system to draw even more attention to themselves.
Last edited by elchevere; 10-07-2019 at 03:41 PM..
Everything rusts in the Northeast so I don't think people are too particular up here...As long as it keeps going and can survive the winter, it's a good car.
California, especially SoCal obviously dominates this list and would rob votes away from other regions that otherwise is a little "underrated" (if that is even a right word to describe this) in terms of how much they care about cars. Wide subsections of the population in Seattle and Vancouver for example is actually quite car/image-centric.
Chicago surprisingly has alot of luxury cars on the road, and alot of luxury dealerships. In my area, luxury imports are far more common than domestics. When I travel to places like Minneapolis, Tampa or Detroit it is rare to find a luxury vehicle import on the road. Even in Southern California where I grew up, I thought the cars were generally economy imports on the road, and not luxury for the most part except in Beverly Hills, the westside of LA, and Newport Beach.
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