Honk Honk Honk

Photos By Keith Newell

My first car was a 1996 Geo Metro LSi. Then came the 2000 Ford Focus SE. I picked them because

Consumer Reports

told me to—for the fuel consumption, safety ratings, and price. I did not require something easy to “handle” or responsive to my needs. What needs? A car is to get you from point A to point B, period. If there’s “interior noise,” just turn up the radio. Who actually cares about a “quiet ride” anyway? Like you want to pretend you’re actually not driving somewhere? That’s called denial. As for aesthetics, to me, beautiful is… oh, dying for an ideal. To look for beauty or meaning in a car, or to try to broadcast something about yourself with your car, is just inexplicable to me.

But cars mean WAY more than transportation to most people. In a social-networking scuffle over Al Gore, my friend Erik attacked my fiancé, Keith, using Keith’s love of cars as a

reductio ad Hitlerum

weapon against him: “I realize that this truth is inconvenient for V-8 enthusiasts, but it is truth nonetheless.” Keith had to explain to me that Erik didn’t mean the tomato-and-celery drink, he meant an eight-cylindered engine, as if Erik’s four puts him on the moral high ground. But if you care about the environment so much, why have any car at all? That’s like a person thinking they’re so awesome for not eating bacon because pigs have the intelligence of three-year-old human children, yet they munch away on chicken. The fact that chickens are dumb makes it even worse that they’re locked up in horrible conditions, pumped with drugs, their beaks and claws cut off—because they don’t even have the option of daydreaming, with those puny chicken brains.

Well, I don’t know if that’s an apt analogy. I just can’t stay inside the car fight long enough to have an actual car fight. My eyes glaze over and I start thinking about food. What I’m meaning to say is that there are all these people who get so mysteriously worked up about cars that even if they’re against a certain kind of car, they’re against it passionately and unreasonably, unaware of how nuts they look to those of us who know nothing of their world.

There are these things called expos that are to cars what Mecca is to Islam or Burning Man is to Ecstasy. They travel from city to city all around the world, and hordes of (mostly) men descend on them and… look at cars. That’s it. Some cars, you can touch or even sit in. And the people get so worked up. I heard about one show where Chrysler had a herd of bulls run down 11th Avenue in Manhattan and one of the execs drove a car through a huge plate of glass. Things don’t reach that level of destructive hysteria when a new line of shoes is introduced. I decided to go to the 2010 New York City International Auto Show and then to the Classic Car Club, an international members-only association for car enthusiasts, and interview everyone I saw, trying to figure out why anyone cares in the first place, never mind cares SO MUCH.

The streets surrounding the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, where the expo was being held, were closed off by barricades and arms-crossed policemen. I stepped out of my taxi and into a faceful of exhaust from gunning little cars showing off. Inside, people were jostling, squeezing into and out of cars rotating on platforms, posing for photos as if the cars were celebrities. There were outrageous human models draped across some of the cars, including one with a golden arm and a couple of girls turned into twins with colored contacts and matching butt pads, but the crowd ogled them with slightly less reverence than I saw bestowed on exposed engines and informative placards. I saw men open trunks and gaze into them as if they’d found the holy vagina. It’s a trunk! It’s an empty box behind the backseat!

Then suddenly I felt it, too. There is no way to describe what happened to me except to say that that this was a mob, and I got swept up in it. I started differentiating between dashboard styles; I felt drawn to a disembodied coolant system. I also felt hostile toward vehicles whose shape or reputation felt like the wrong one. I leaped at the DODGE sign as if I were a ram and it had challenged me. Don’t be so sure you wouldn’t have done the same.

We escaped just in time: When the show closed on Sunday, riots broke out in Times Square—54 arrested, 4 shot. The NYPD spokesman said this happens every time the auto show happens over Easter. I suppose the sugar rush from Easter baskets combines with that heady new-car smell, and the resultant passion is too intense to be contained.

WHY CARS?

Car Product Specialist

Pretty, smooth-talking Kate pointed out that she was an independent contractor and NOT an employee of Nissan. That’s why she could talk to me (the press). There was a gag on everyone else. And I can see why: Kate got me conspiracy-theorizing for days with her yes-we- could-always-locate- you-but-it’s-not-an- issue story. I’d rather die than leave my fingerprints on a Nissan Leaf! Then again, I resisted having any and all tracking devices—Social Security number, credit card, tattoo, cell phone, and then iPhone—longer than any of my friends, and gave in eventually with all of those, so I’m sure I’ll eat my words.

We’re looking at the new Nissan Leaf. From your phone you can start your car, you can preheat it or precool it, it’ll alert you if it’s off its charger.

The navigation system is connected to a cell network, kind of like a 3G network, so it actually downloads its own updates in real time. You’ll be able to just hit a button that will pop up all the charging stations in a radius around your electric car on the map.

Pretty much every new car has a computer now. What makes this car different is that its computer is hooked up to your phone?

It’s like there’s an embedded cell in the car. Almost like the car has a phone number. That’s what it uses to communicate with your cell phone and also to communicate with Nissan for the navigation updates. So it’s just an embedded mobile network.

Is there any way people could locate you, like how you can tell where and when someone made a phone call, and that information is stored?

Technically speaking, from where Nissan is sending you the updates, they would be able to locate you. So in some sense there is a tracking capability, yes. It’s not something that Nissan is planning on doing—tracking people’s vehicles. But… from a learning standpoint, it’s great because we can use the data as to where people are charging to educate us so that we know where to put more chargers. But as for an outside source hacking in to track you, I don’t think it’s an issue.

Car Fluffer

There were all these grown men walking around with feather dusters. They, too, were not allowed to speak to the press, so we did this one on the sly with my recorder down low, no photos.

Did you get this job because you love cars so much?

No. I’m a Local 1 New York City plumber and I’m laid off.

What do they call it, dusting the cars?

Cosmetic car care.

Have you seen any interesting messes on any cars?

No, not yet. I hope not. I’m not looking forward to that. I heard it gets a little crazy in here toward the end of the week.

Why, what happens?

I’m not sure. I just heard that. I guess I’ll find out, right?

How have the crowds been treating you, as a human being cleaning up after them?

I don’t know. It depends where you’re from. People look at New York and say “rude.” I’ve lived in New York all my life, so I know no better.

Car Security

At the time, I didn’t know we were working up to a riot, so I didn’t understand the need for dozens of security guards muttering into their walkie-talkies and fondling their batons. I got this one to talk to me by pretending to just be shooting the breeze.

Why do they need so much security here? Do people get handsy with the cars?

If they do, I ask them to stop and they comply.

Has anyone ever tried to argue with you instead of complying?

No, then I call the boss. I try not to get too involved. And there are security cameras everywhere.

Is this job ever fun?

No.

I haven’t been to New York for a while. I noticed security’s ramped up all over the city. The atmosphere is different. People look scared.

Yes. God is not here.

Three Car Amigos

I loved how tell-it-like-it-is these friends were. They’re like permanently on weed except not scatterbrained.

How come you came to the expo?

Carol:

To see cars.

Mike:

We’ve been coming for years.

What kind of cars do you come for?

Carol:

I came to see the Cadillacs. Nancy wants to see the Hondas.

Why Cadillac and Honda?

Carol:

Cadillac because it’s expensive.

Nancy:

And the Honda is fast.

I was just talking to someone about a car you can partly operate from your phone. Would you like that? Would you feel like you were losing control, being overhandled by technology? Or would you feel like you were being served in luxury?

Carol:

It would be convenient. But then again, if you lose your phone…

And what about you, the man of the group?

Mike:

The more technology, the better. The more that’s in the car, the better. Bring your whole house into the car.

Chase Davis

Car Tuner

Turns out Chase Davis is famous. There are all these videos of him on YouTube being interviewed and everyone in the videos looks like they know exactly what he’s talking about, but when I got home and tried to transcribe this interview, I was going back and forth between my little tape recorder and Google, trying to figure out what the heck anything he said meant until I got a big headache and gave up trying to decode any of it. The man’s so deep into cars he forgot that there are still some of us out here who don’t know the shorthand. What was so thrilling for all the guys gathered around eavesdropping on my interview, almost pushing me over, what they were drooling and nodding to, was to me a mere series of numbers, letters, and technical terms.

I was waiting around a long time to talk to you! I think if I wasn’t giving that guy before me the hairy eyeball the whole time, he would have stayed gnawing on your ear another two hours!

You have guys that come by two, three, four times, a half hour or an hour each time.

What are they so interested in?

What kind of paint is it, how much horsepower, who did the wide-body conversion—that was us. We extended each quarter-panel five inches on each side. Took out the old 6.1 and poured out to a 440 stroker. The transmission, drive train, axle, pistons, computer—everything was built for the 1,046 horsepower.

OK. But why care about cars to begin with?

For me, if the guy down the street gets the same car I have, I’m gonna want to make mine different from his, because I’m my own person. Customize it to myself.

What do these cars you have here say?

This one’s just clean, nice wheels, nothing out of control, no body kits. Just a nice, clean car.

How fast can it go?

150, 160. The gear ratio now is just to be driven, nothing out of control. [Something-something] Dodge Challenger SRT8 we stroked it out. Then this one, this is just wild. Wide body, a paint job that’s making your eyes pop—metallic in the flake. It’s loud. [Something-something] LP640.

Are those called suicide doors, the doors that open up?

Nope. Lambo doors. We outfitted this one with G2-forged wheels, CB2s, performance kit, full carbon fiber, front lip, three-piece diffuser, trunk-replacement piece, valtronic exhaust system.

How fast?

212, 219.

How much?

Stock, four, four-forty.

And after you rebuild them?

This one is for sale for $470,000.

Car Lover

Zac Moseley runs the Classic Car Club of Manhattan. It has all these beautiful old cars you can use for basically the same annual price (in Manhattan, at least) you would have to pay to own and garage your own, say, Geo Metro. The Classic Car Club uses a point system, where you pay roughly $10 a point, and can rent a Ferrari for a few points on a winter weekday or a hundred points on a summer weekend. I heard about a similar club in Boston that uses a barter system, and people would trade weeks at their vacation home or nights with their wives for weekends with one of the club’s Ferraris. Why? Why give up your vacation or wife’s vagina for a wheel in your hand? After talking to Zac, I felt like I finally understood—it’s not the wheel or the engine, it’s the road opening up before you. It’s the woods or the buildings closing into a blur behind you. It’s motion. It’s forwardness. It’s life happening with your foot determining the gas to propel you or the brakes to stop it all.

Something that no one at the expo was able to answer satisfactorily for me was: Why love cars?

I grew up in Maine in the woods. The high school was 25 miles from my house. When I finally had a car, it was a representation of freedom for me. I think in America, it’s “get in a car, get on the open road”—our whole culture is built on that. It’s something deep- rooted, to have the wheel of your own car in your hand, going wherever you want to go.

So it’s more to get away than to get to.

Probably.

With the Leaf—they had that car at the Expo—Nissan can track you. Where’s the freedom in that?

That’s cool, though. We have a Tesla here, an electric car. It’s fantastic.

Nothing against electric cars. I’m just paranoid, electric or gas. Remember in Grease, the knives shot out of the bad guy’s car in the drag race? Ever seen anything like that in real life?

You might find something like that on some rockabilly guys’ cars—rat rods. Cars from the 1950s and 60s with black paint and all kinds of crazy things on them; they might do that with the knives just to pay homage to

Grease

. But it’s not like you can go to SEMA and buy knives that come out of your wheels.

That’s too bad. With new cars, driving is a more passive experience, with the safety regulations and sensors that can tell when you’re tailing another car too closely and make the car brake itself. That’s sort of taking driving out of the driver’s hands.

That’s one of my biggest reasons for liking classic cars. They are true machines. You can hear and feel everything that’s going on with the car and you’re in control. More and more, modern conveniences and driver aids are getting in the way of that. It could really detach people from having to take responsibility for driving.

Did you see that Woody Allen movie where people allowed more and more to be done for them, eventually even falling in love? So if their relationship wasn’t that exciting, they’d step into these pods and get infused with love hormones and feel good about their mate again.

Wasn’t it the Orgasmic Orb? And that could be the future mobility system—get in a pod, program where you want to end up, and just check your internet news and email while you’re going. That could make sense, especially around cities. But if that’s the future, it’s going to kill the automobile as we know it.

There’s this medieval trope that a knight on a horse is mind over body—

Yeah—

Oh, look at you! “Yeah, me and that trope go way back.” But then the horse transformed into a car, and now the car is—

And now machine is conquering man. Yeah. All these sophisticated automotive systems make it so that the car will drive better, faster, and safer than you can control it yourself. It is sort of taking over.

We’re becoming avatars in our own life.

Right. Mercedes has a system where if you fall asleep at the wheel, it will register that and apply the brakes for you. Sounds great, but… knowing how electronics tend to fail ten, 15 years down the road, I’d really hate to see what’s going to happen to these cars. If the cars detect erroneously and slam on the brakes in the middle of the highway, it’s a real problem.

Also if you’re taking on the Mob single-handedly and you WANT to crash into someone, it won’t let you!

Yeah.

Plus the new cars are harder to steal. The car will alert the owner and they’ll shut you down remotely. All my freedoms are being taken away! My freedom to crash, my freedom to steal!

[

not so enthusiastic

] Yeah…

I can see that you are going to ignore all my illegal half-stated questions. Let’s play a game called What Kind of Car Does a ____ Drive?

Like if you see a guy with a mullet and he gets into an 80s Trans Am?

Haha! Yeah, it’s the metal mullet! What kind of car does a stripper drive?

A red Mercedes convertible.

Soccer mom?

Minivan is too easy, so I’m going to say a Volvo XC90.

High school kid.

Honda Civic.

Drug dealer.

Black Mercedes or BMW sedan.

Federal agent.

A black, big American sedan—either a Lincoln or a Crown Vic.

Old money.

Old money is probably going to have some taste, so they’ll probably be driving a really classy, slightly older-model Mercedes. An S-Class from the 90s.

Nouveau riche.

BMW 6 Series convertible.

Someone who never had a car.

The Nissan Cube is designed just for that—for people who don’t like cars but want to roll around in an iPod.

Black guy.

White BMW.

Black woman.

White BMW convertible.

Weight lifter.

Jeep.

What kind of a person won’t drive, not even the Nissan Cube?

We live in Manhattan, so there are lots. But if I had to pick just one, I’d say socialite. They do not want to drive. They want to be driven.

Do members get to drive the motorcycles you have here?

No. The motorcycles are our toys. Bikes are too much of a liability in New York. We do run them in London and LA, but in New York it’s crazy. I’m the only person who rides a bike here who hasn’t been knocked off in the last year. We’d have a lot of dead members if we did bikes.

I still don’t know why people love cars. I don’t know why I love cars now. But I do. Something happened to me over my two days in New York immersed in cars, car people, and terminology. Now that I understand the meaning and subtleties of, say, a wheel, I see beauty in certain ones. It could be nothing more than the fact that when we can speak the language, what we’re talking about becomes part of our identity. Forced to make a decision, I chose a side: the size, construction, look, and gadgets of the Audi TTS. Now I feel angry toward cars other than the Audi TTS, because they represent people making different decisions, and it is as if they have insulted my choice.

Now that I see how fluid a thing personality is, I better be careful about the subject matter of my next article. Can’t be on snuff flicks or camping (all that equipment gets expensive, and the people get ugly!) or coprophilia, and especially not Cleveland steamers, which I just found on Wikipedia. Shit… I’m getting interested.