What Does Your Car Say About You?

Last night lovely fiance and I are discussing friends that we have invited to the wedding when lovely fiance passes comment on their car. Not particularly remarkable you might think, except that for the first time it dawned on me that this is a surprisingly common theme.

For example I could mention someone I've met and blather on about where they work and what they look like etc etc, and lovely fiance will inevitably ask me what car they drive.
'Hmm, not sure,' I say, 'Mercedes?'
'Never been keen on the Mercedes,' he will say. 'Nouveau riche.'

When I first met lovely fiance he was driving a very sleek Audi TT. We had a few outings before baby daughter arrived where the elder two kids were squashed complaining in the back of it. But to his absolute credit he quickly stepped up to the plate and offloaded the sports car for a big Audi A4 as soon as he realised he wanted us all to be together. This has not, however, affected his ongoing interest in cars, or changed the fact that his view of people is influenced by the model they choose to drive. Lovely fiance definitely has a taste for the top of the range Porsche as well as something called the Alfa Spider. Whatever that is. Sometimes we will be driving along and he will mutter the make of the car in front under his breath, or tell me to 'check out that Bentley. Seventy grand that must be.'

All of this has never really crystallised in my mind as something I could relate to, however following our conversation about friends and their cars I realised that I do exactly the same. Only it doesn't relate to cars, in my case the yardstick for my judgement about other women is their clothes, their handbags (I LOVE handbags) and especially how thin they are. I distinctly remember thinking when I met the girlfriend of one of lovely fiance's friends recently that her Prada glasses were a bit in-your-face and showy, and wondering if that meant she was too. So it seems lovely fiance and I are not so different after all.