Popular Culture of Cars

The first automobile was the Benz Patent Motor Car, which was a gas powered cylinder engine that was powered for the first time in 1879- well over a hundred years ago.

Cars are something that those who live in industrial societies are so used to seeing and accessing, and they've evolved to come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. From the Fiat and the Volkswagen Beetle, to the Suburban and the Hummers, commercial vehicles have become something so complex and ingrained in our culture, we've begun to create assumptions of people's identities based solely on the cars they drive, and it's something that's so normalized, we're given toy cars to play with as children. 

One of the most popular assumptions is the "soccer mom" trope. This idea conjures up images of a woman who is driving all of her children to their various sports and clubs, and often is in charge of the carpool. She's typically middle-class and suburban. Her cars are spacious and large, but incredibly safe, and often even just googling it shows a list catered specifically to "soccer moms".  The typical assumption would be that the driver would be a woman, white, "fed-up" with her husband and always having to clean up after her kids, and probably has the "Can I Speak To Your Manager" haircut.

We've begun the narratives of assumptions of other people based on what they drive because typically it's not wrong, because cars nowadays are made to fit the needs of people. Soccer Moms drive the cars they do because they need the features that provides. Expensive, luxury vehicles are driven by rich people because they're the only ones who can afford it. These things have become some sort of derisive remarks, but originally they were simply based in the fact of it.

Cars are something that only recently have become widely available, because back in the day, only the rich could afford cars, but now they're typically affordable especially with payment plans and leasing. (Funnily enough, back then, only the rich could drive, and everyone rode horses, but now everyone can drive and only the rich have horses. Oh, how the stables have turned.) With vehicles becoming more normalized and accessible, high ways were built and paved, which allowed people who previously never traveled, and typically lived within walking distance of their relatives, the stores, and everything they've every known,  to begin to branch out and explore and allowed for more communication between regions and the transfer of ideas and culture to diffuse across the land. 

People also enjoy refurbishing cars, building them from the ground up, collecting them- it's endless the subcultures that arise specifically around cars. There's all sorts of different car shows where people show of their antique cars, muscle cars, trucks, repaired, mismatched, any and all sorts of cars, and people associate their own cars with their ideas of social statuses and image among other people. 

Cars can be a source of discussion on the psychology of people, sociology and statuses, economic views, political opinions, and it also can be traced throughout history.