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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Personally it's the apperciation of design, craftsmanship, the mechanics, and the fun that cars can create. Modification is a form of self expression for me. Building and racing machines that dominate their rivals scratches a competitive itch. Then there's the primal enjoyment of having something powerful as a car under your direct command that's intoxicating.
And of course watching shows for inspiration, or entertainment watching others achieve what I personally cannot.
The competition aspect makes alot of sense. Especially when I consider both the preparation and execution go into it. I think if I was the builder I'd HAVE to be the driver/racer too though.
I thought that when I got started, but I really enjoy the building and briefly enjoy the results. Then I’m happy for the owner to take it away while I cross my fingers that it all keeps working.
It’s equal parts problem solving, fine motor skills, and perseverance that keep me working on old cars. That’s why I’m not at a dealership or quick turnaround repair place.
It’s also why I’m poor
Its a pretty broad question, like asking why you like video games or shows. Different people like different aspects of cars. Some use cars as a canvas to shape their car in a specific way that expresses their tastes. Others for their mechanical abilities.
Personally I like the driving experience. I appreciate a built up car, more then just a car bought with huge chunks of money. It shows more effort and personality of the owner tuning their car for a specific purpose. I also like a nice show car. Its like an art piece.
I do enjoy going to car shows actually. I can agree that its usually more impressive to see something built up than something expensive from the dealer. I guess I recognize its a hobby as any other, just most curious about the draw to that specific hobby. Good response!
I used to be kinda into cars, and am friends with other car guys. The draw oftentimes is being exposed to them at a young age via someone they're close to. As others have stated the reasons for being drawn to them vary greatly. They may appreciate the mechanical nature, the power they can create, the driving experience, the community, travel, the satisfaction from building and/or maintaining your own vehicle, etc.
I used to have a 2015 Camaro, which wasn't a supercar by any means, but still decently sporty. I forget the trim package, but it had a V6 and 6spd manual, but that was enough for me. It wasn't until I drove it around a while (the crafty salesperson let me take it home and drive it around over a holiday), but I truly understood the appeal. At least in my car, it felt like sitting in a race cockpit, rather than a regular driver's seat. It's not just about fast, either. The way the car handled was much different than other vehicles I had driven. It hugged the road much better and even just taking banked bends and interchanges on highways felt much smoother. The manual transmission also helped with the experience, as it gives you greater control over the speed and acceleration (I know modern automatics are faster, but manual is still more fun). Seeing and hearing a cool car is fun and all, but driving a car meant for performance is an experience in itself. Also, my Camaro had a HUD projected onto the windshield, which 100% sold me on it, lol.
Childhood.
Hi, car gal here with other car gal friends. My uncle (mechanic) was my main babysitter when I was a kid. I used to watch him overhaul a clutch as he said each procedure out loud to see if I was paying attention and encouraged me to ask questions.
He would take me and my cousins to car shows, tire shops and car dealerships (when they’re closed). We learned to appreciate different types of vehicles and languages from him; it’s kinda hard to read a manual if you don’t know German.Also, my uncle kept plenty of Legos and Matchbox cars in his shop for us to play with – they were my favorite toys.
Then one day, I discovered boys.
Oil changes and smelling like Lava soap with a hint of sweat weren’t my thing anymore. My first purchase was with my first boyfriend, we bought a beat up old boat for $500.
Today, I still prefer cars with the best turning radius. I will never underestimate an I4 or choose a V6 over it without careful consideration; I do love being behind the wheel of an I6. Some people will pay an extra $4,000 for Vrooom (PSE system) while others like me would rather spend the money on Kevlar tires and strict scheduled maintenance.
Different strokes for different folks – that’s what personalization is about.
Not a car guy, but it makes more sense to me than people who collect expensive watches. At least a car is fun to drive and goes vroom. A rolex is just some jewelery for guys.
I don’t collect watches, but I appreciate really well designed mechanical/analog devices. I think spending money on brand names is stupid, but I honestly would love an intricate self winding watch.
Not a watch, but check out the mechanics in this cassette player. I love anything like this.
that's a cool hobby! I used to love watching the parts of my tape deck move as a kid. Te parts clunking into pace, the gentle pace of the rotation. That's a very nice player you've got!
Hell yes, this is art. Just like how to me some cars are art (240z with itbs....hnnnng).
Most cars are boring toasters that society is over reliant on. I myself dont own a boring car since i enjoy driving so I can't speak to that.
My new rule for myself is everything I bring into my house has to be art. I got this beautiful hand made cutting board the other day. Anything can be art, and it doesn’t all have to be pricy. I threw some pathos I propagated into a soup can the other day. Boom art!
This is mostly me trying to cope with all the AI slop that is slowly eating digital and physical art forms. For me, art is anything human made, and I want to surround myself with it.
That's true, both can be used as status symbols. At least with a watch, once you buy it, mission complete. No need to go throwing new gears in it to make it tick louder.
But still kind the same…the guys i know that are into watches dont buy just one and done. They are collectors. Like one for each type of outfit almost. So this could compare to buying numerous car parts. And there’s always the unobtainable dream watch that probably costs as much as a nice car…
What I don't understand is how you could not be into cars. There are few things more thrilling than driving a proper sports car the way it was designed to be driven.
It surely doesn't hurt that I'm a geek, so I'm naturally attracted to anything electronic or mechanical. The inner workings of a vehicle are beyond fascinating.
If you don't enjoy driving, part of it might have to be due to the fact that you've only ever been behind the wheel of boring commuter cars. Take a manual Supra or 400Z for a test drive sometime, and tell me it doesn't change your opinion of cars. If that doesn't work for you, then I don't know what to tell you. To each their own.
Sitting behind the wheel of something belching gas that requires full concentration just isn't that interesting. Biking is a much more enjoyable activity.
Just another form of expression and status. Think of it like fashion. We “wear” our cars for a big chunk of our lives.
Yeah, thats the main understanding I have of it. Just seems like an odd way to express your personality.
Just wait til we’re cyborgs. How do you express your personality?
I’ve been into cars as art from the moment I saw a Lamborghini. I view the mechanical work/modifications as a means to an end rather than the fun part.
I’ve not done a ton of performance upgrades, but I’ve upgraded my clutch to a ceramic and now, every time I shift, I get a more satisfying feel. It’s even better knowing I made that improvement myself.
Most of it comes down to the sense of pride and accomplishment I get from the finished result.
Driving is fun. Driving events are even more fun. It gets me out of the house even on rainy crappy days.
I like Driving scenic roads.
I love mechanical things that give feedback. Since everything like that has been removed now because of technology ( no vcrs. No reel to reels, no projectors. Heck mosy people type on an ipad now so keyboards are becomibg less of a thing for normal people) its one of the last remaining visceral mechanical experiences.
It also helps i mostly only drive manual rwd cars.
Now do I like traffic or ever expanding suburban nightmare roads designed for Karen that drives her $100k escalade around? No. Ban that shit.
After working on them professionally I stopped liking them. I don't even really like driving anymore. Everything about a car is a scam.
I always say "I love driving which is why I hate driving anywhere." I would love to have a fleet of vehicles I could really drive but laws, traffic, maintenance, etc. Driving isn't fun in the same way other things are because you need a lot of space or a lot of money to enjoy it. Drawing? I can do that with a No. 2 I swiped from IKEA. Can't exactly take my commuter to Monza without running up a bill.
Cars are like big, greasy legos
Car go VROOOOOOM. But also points at name. A family member was an accident reconstructist. I attended both public car shows and private car crash tests as a kid. My name was proudly created by me at 6 years old when I had to come up with a unique username for AOL. The two Z's are symbols of two mangled, wrecked... carzz.
VROOOOOOM!
When I was young I enjoyed working on cars because they were complex enough to be interesting and affordable enough to do as a hobby. Like my first car in the 90s was a beat up 280z I bought for $500 and I spent a few hundred bucks making it slightly less beat up plus a new radio and speakers! Lived a few miles out of town, and connected with my first long term girlfriend by giving her rides home.
As time went on I had some other fun csr projects, including painting up the car I bought from an old lady who drove it to church on Sundays like a dairy cow while using it for deliveries. Eventually bought an 8 year old Honda Civic Si and did the sound system swap again and worked on that too. Again, didn't poor a lot of money into it but loved working on it to improve some things and might have if I had more money available.
Now I have a three year old vehicle that is super reliable and complex enough that I don't plan on doing anything to it beyond attaching stuff to make it useful. I would love to buy a 20+ year old model vehicle and convert it to electric but that kind of stuff is way beyond my resources and paying someone to do it wouldn't be as fun. There is just something really satisfying about maintaining complex machinery that I use almost every day.
I should get an e bike but I am afraid of other drivers.
I was a car guy, more or less. I enjoyed driving them, I enjoyed tinkering with them. I like going fast, I like shifting gears. I did some incredibly cool road trips, I did some autocross, I did some commercial driving too and enjoyed the challenge of finding the most efficient routes across the city.
But there are too many cars on the road, designing our cities around them was a potentially civilization-ending mistake, and we should all stop burning fossil fuels like right now and also stop spreading microplastics, oil, and road salt all over the land. There are better ways to commute. These days I'm more of a "fuck cars" guy.
I just think they’re neat honestly. feel similarly about boats and trains and well executed meals and nice interior design.
It's a blend of art and engineering. I don't appreciate a lot of traditional art. Music, movies and TV, but not theater or paintings or most sculpture. But a good looking car just draws your eyes to it like an attractive person, but it's rude to stare at people. It's almost rude to NOT stare at a Porsche 911 GT3 RS.
Then there's the beauty of the engineering. Thousands of parts working together to make one beautiful machine do what it's supposed to do. It's like how society is supposed to work. But instead of a GT3 RS, we've got a '96 Dodge neon with no working starter, only two working forward gears, a door that won't open and electrical issues.
In today's world it's harder and harder to justify being a car guy, but I've loved em since I can remember.
Edit: I would add to that, the same feelings I have about cars being a blend of art and engineering, is the same reason I have a great respect for architecture. True great architecture is also a blend of art and engineering. You can replace the Porsche with Notre Dame, while the F-150 can be replaced with a modern factory. Utilitarian garbage.
Motor vehicles are one of the very few things in this world that are simultaneously beautiful, useful, and fascinating
I like all kinds of tech, gadgets, tools and machinery. Cars are just one part of that. I'd like to have an excavator too if I could afford one and justify buing it, but I don't. Car however, I have need for so why not go and buy one that you actually enjoy driving and looking at rather than something that just gets the job done. I don't really spend a huge amount of money on it. My truck cost me 10k€ and the maintenance + fuel + insurance costs for the 7 years I've had it are around 350€/month. I can imagine myself spending more on offroad mods and such but I just have no need for that currently.
I-I'm not? Am I? Oh god what kind of car am I?
holds up a mirror and to your horror you see... You are a cybertruck
Do you like to drive?
For the most part yes. But when I didn't have much money cars were like my enemy.
I can totally understand that, it's not cheap to drive a car. I really don't consider myself a 'car guy' but I do like to go for a drive. I like to go around corners fast, I like to find an empty country road and see where it ends. I don't think working on cars is fun, most of the time. But I do most of the work on my vehicles to save money, rarely do I add anything aftermarket.
Car go vroom. Modded car go vroom faster. Simple as.
(It’s also a socially acceptable autistic fixation.)
I like hearing them purr and watching their zoomies
A family member was a mechanic and spent all their time in the garage working on barely functioning cars. In retrospect, it’s probably their autism hyper fixation.
My second car was pretty nice, but it was murderously expensive to have services done, and the internet community around it was fairly firm about doing specific preventative maintenance. So I did that.
I’m not really a car guy anymore, because I don’t have the time to work on the cars like I want to, and I don’t have the space either. There’s too many other cars on the roads, which makes spirited driving dangerous. Now, I live vicariously through YouTube channels and mainly drive a toaster EV.
I love cars because they're part art and expression, and part joy/relaxation. They're as unique as an individual's personality, and can be customized to suit. Driving on the open road is this synchronized dance of metal and flesh that propels you far faster than nature ever intended (less so if you drive an automatic). It's a testament to human progress. As someone who loves engineering in every specialty, cars blend mechanical, electrical, electronics, robotics, design...every engineering specialty there is, into 1 complete package that utilizes them all. Every inch of a car is meticulously crafted and lovingly sculpted by engineers, and its one of mankind's crowning achievements of modern society. It is singlehandedly the most complex, and most beautiful thing many of us will ever own.
Racing in and of itself has just as many forms, each pushing the limits of this engineering to new heights, and is a wonderful test bed for people to wring the most out of the world around us.
And each year, I marvel at the concept cars and the art of cars to come. It just tickles so many of my fancies.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the wide range that it's given me and others to travel and experience new places.
I can start by saying that I'm a tech "guy". The evolution was simple: Puzzles, Lego, bikes, model R/C cars/planes, computers, motorcycles then cars. Add to that motorcycles and cars give you freedom of movement to go anywhere anytime in a whim, it is difficult to not geek about them.
Then, during a brief period of my life I lived in a big (for me) city and had to use the public transport and it was horrible. This only exacerbated my dreams of owning a motor vehicle. Car magazines helped fuel these dreams.
My dad loved sports cars, that didn't help the addiction ;)
I grew up in a big city so I didn't learn to drive until I was 23, and once I did, I realized how much I had been missing. A car with a full tank of gas really does feel like freedom to me, so I enjoy having a car that is good at being a car. I'm not particularly interested in aftermarket modifications, but I am willing to pay more for a car that is fast, handles well, and looks good.