Cars and Why We Love Them

By Jackson Bond

What makes us love cars as much as we do? We have movies, television shows and songs dedicated to them. What makes us love one brand and hate another? How can we bond with a piece of machinery and think of it as more than a sum of its parts? These are the questions I aim to help answer with this blog.

For this first post, I think we should talk about how we love these cars. We can love a car while never seeing one in person, let alone driving it. Whether it's just the brand name or how the angles and curves of the car speak to us, we love them.

What makes us love them in the first place? They're just machinery that serves a purpose like a coffee maker or a toaster, yet there are not any toaster enthusiasts spending thousands of dollars to make their toaster better. I think it's how they transport us and protect us, the social standing they bring, and our ability to control and manipulate them, because we all know humans are power hungry.

Local events are what really bring the scene into new light and keep people entranced. If the only thing you ever do with your car is drive it to work you can get bored with it. One of our local Autocross chapters, The Tri-Lakes Sports Car Club https://www.facebook.com/tlscc/?fref=ts is helping to get some excitement back into your life. The second Sunday of every month they meet at Motlow’s Tullahoma Campus to carve up the cones. Whether it’s the drive there or the event itself, it’s a lot of fun. 

I think the social standing aspect has a strong hold on the car scene. If you see a BMW or a Mercedes Benz, you know that person spent some money. However, if you see an older Toyota Camry, you don't think the same thing. This blog will be dedicated to helping expunge these notions, and figuring out why we think these cars have souls and personality when in reality they are just well-engineered machines.

Just looking at blogs like http://revlimiter.net/  http://www.speedhunters.com/ or http://www.stanceworks.com/ that are completely dedicated to cars and the lifestyle around them shows how dedicated people can be to their cars. It takes people from all walks of life to make the car community what it is, and they deliver.

I have been involved with Miatas for a few years now, researching them and working on them. Now that my Miata is about to go on Craigslist and has been replaced by a Subaru Wagon, I’ll probably spend most of my researching time for that instead. It doesn’t mean I don’t still love Miatas. It just means my interest has wavered, and I want a car that has a backseat and working A/C, and I don’t need up-to-the-minute information about parts for a car I don’t own.

The reason I love cars so much is the fact that it’s something you use daily, and a fairly major part of everyone’s life. If you didn’t have your car, you wouldn’t be able to go to the places you need to or get to work or school. I think having one I consider cool that is a little more fun to drive than average helps make the day go better for me. It adds the certain spice of life crucial to keeping excitement.  

            Cars took my interest when I was around 5. Since then they have been a major part of my life. Through a lot of opinion changes and elbow grease I have grown as an enthusiast to where I am today. Today I love Subaru’s and I am a college student at Motlow State Community College.