What does your car say about you?

The fallout from the explosion of gas prices is about to put a big crimp in all our excesses, yea even our necessities. But the one hit that’s apt to cause the most bleeding among many of us Americans is the one we’ll take in our major status symbols – our cars.

With this in mind, I couldn’t help but stare at the big, black, shiny Hummer parked five feet away from me, just outside the window of the fitness center where I was huffing and puffing on the stair-stepper. Wow! What a monster. Which one of my fellow exercisers could be the driver of that intimidating beast, I wondered? Who looks well-heeled enough to afford such an indulgence and still have enough money left over to keep that gas-guzzler, a’guzzling?

Using my never-fail, ever-ready cultural bias, I had her pegged in one-second flat. She was the young, pretty one – the petite blonde wearing a real exercise outfit – the one that reminded all of the rest of us of our better days, at least in our dreams.

But, back to that malevolent looking, monster car … why would somebody buy such a machine for everyday use? Obviously there’s more to this than money. My curiosity led me to an Internet search of today’s cars and the people who buy them. As usual there was a goldmine of information on the subject.

For many folks, their cars are extensions of themselves and it’s no mystery that this drives automobile manufacturers’ marketing strategies. Savvy market researchers look under every rock of customer motivation in their effort to accurately identify the psychological needs of their prospective buyers. Surveys, psychological profiles and cultural trends all play into the marketing strategy for each unique class of automobiles.

I’ll probably be run out of town in my red Ford station wagon for what I’m about to say here, but I quote Keith Brashear, a reporter for the New York Times. He uncovered some very “unflattering conclusions” not only about this sports utility vehicle phenomenon, but about SUV drivers, too, when he interviewed auto industry marketing experts on the subject.

A former Ford strategist said of the drivers of SUVs, “It’s about not letting anything get in your way, and in the extreme, about intimidating others to get out of your way.” (Which came first, the attitude or the SUV?)

Further, Brashear’s report revealed the depth to which an SUV driver’s personality has been exposed by marketers’ surveys. SUV drivers “tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They’re frequently uneasy about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence about their driving skills and above all they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed with little interest in their neighbors and their communities. They are more restless and less social; they like fine dining and seldom go to church.”

One of GM’s top engineers said, “Well, (with) SUV drivers, it’s more of an image thing,” and he agrees with findings from other studies that SUV owners “want to be in control of others around them.”

Well, if you’re left out of that description, you are in the minority. We’re an image conscious society – but that’s what makes our materialistic world go round, keeping it challenging and interesting.

Cars are potency symbols for both men and women and we’re suckers for ads like, “If you dream it, do it!” Or, Cadillac’s new commercial that shows a luscious brunette driving a knockout red model, cooing into the camera, “It’s great pulling up to the boys club driving this.” Car commercials consistently push the envelope, and when they’re successful … they push our buttons.

Our cars say a lot about us – not only the kind of car we buy, but its color, too. Some years ago, Mercedes-Benz researched the impact of a car’s color on safety. Their findings showed yellow was the most highly visible color and dark red or maroon cars were the worst color due to this color becoming invisible to receptors in our eyes at dusk and dawn. They could have warned us.

Regardless of its color, its style, its cost to buy and its cost to drive – our cars mean a lot to us. If we can’t afford the gas to tool it around town and country, indulging our fancy, (or even driving to work!) – will we end up with a thing author Alain de Botton describes in his book and in its title, “Status Anxiety?”