Stereotypes on Wheels

I’ve spent years watching what people actually buy, working part-time in a used car dealership, and you start to see patterns. It’s not scientific, but it is brutally obvious. People don’t so much pick cars as cars pick them. And when they do, they tell you far more than the buyer realises.

Take the women. There are three kinds. First, your mum or your nan. They’ll drive anything. Hand them the keys to a battered Mondeo with the roof lining hanging down, and off they’ll go to bingo without a second thought. A car is a kettle on wheels to them. You switch it on, it gets you from A to B, and if it wheezes a bit or smells faintly of wet dog, well, that’s life.

Then there’s the very clever, very attractive young woman who goes for the cutesy car. The Fiat 500, the Mini, something small and pastel-coloured with curves in all the wrong places. These are not cars, they’re teddy bears on alloys. You can almost hear them whispering lullabies when you shut the door. The Smart car sits awkwardly between categories — it can be cutesy, or it can be something your nan might drive, or even your grandad. In fact, it’s probably the only car that manages to look like a teddy bear and a mobility scooter at the same time.

Finally, the bleach-blonde contingent. Eyelashes you could shelter under in a rainstorm, lips pumped up like a dinghy, job title along the lines of “executive assistant, level two.” For them it has to be the Evoque or the Mercedes. Something with the presence of a yacht, preferably white, preferably leased. It’s less transport, more a moving Instagram filter.

But before anyone shouts “sexist” and hurls a copy of the Guardian in my face, the men are just as bad.

Category A: the BMW 3-Series man. Always a 320d, never the fast one. He buys it because he thinks it says hedge fund, but what it really says is company car park. You’ll know him by the broken parking sensor and the air of misplaced self-importance.

Category B: the Corsa lad. Usually in his twenties, exhaust big enough to frighten cattle, convinced he’s Ayrton Senna while delivering kebabs. His idea of an apex is the mini-roundabout outside Tesco. His passengers cling to the grab handles like shipwreck survivors. It inevitably ends in disaster.

Category C: the boomer Lexus Or Galaxy owner. Bought it for the reliability and the buttons the size of dinner plates. Drives it once a week to the golf club at 23 miles an hour or fills it full of junk for the tip rum (like me). If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t know Lexus still made cars.

Category D: the performance and prestige buyer. This is where it gets interesting. They’re after the Porsche, the Ferrari, the Aston, or at the very least the high-powered Mercedes or Audi. Not that we’ve had Ferraris or Astons through our dealership, but we’ve certainly seen the Porsches, the Mercedes and the Audis. These are the cars people buy when they want to announce that their bonus has landed and they’re not afraid to convert it into exhaust noise. And here’s where my eldest son slots in. He doesn’t bother with finance or lease paperwork - he pays in cash. He just wants the fastest car on the block, and he can afford it. It’s not about teddy bears, drainpipe exhausts, or buttons the size of dinner plates. It’s about speed, bought outright. A cheque? No. A wad of notes on the salesman’s desk. And a grin that says, “Yes, I really did just do that.”

So there you have it. Equal opportunities in stereotyping. Women with teddy bears and Instagram filters, men with delusions of grandeur, drainpipes for exhausts, buttons like dinner plates, and the occasional cash-flashing son who thinks he’s auditioning for Top Gear. Nobody escapes the polemic, and nor should they. Because the truth is, cars don’t just reveal taste - they reveal character. And sometimes, that character is written in chrome letters across the boot lid.