I remember once meeting a man who had immigrated over from Zimbabwe and been around for a couple of years. This man was working a minimum wage to support his University education but let me assure you, that man had a PHD in Vehicular Science
Car Specifications
The man could spit out the name, rank, serial number, engine size, horsepower and shoe size of every vehicle that cost more than ten thousand dollars. Whether it was explaining why Lambogini was so superior to other brands or Mercedes was just a run of the mill car, it didn’t matter: as we sat in that Mazda 121, we were participating in a true car connoisseur session.
Sex Makes A Difference
The love for cars is different amongst male and female children of the soil. Men love to read car magazines and understand the beauty, the symmetry, the proportions, the pieces, the systems, the history and the mechanics behind the vehicle.
It doesn’t matter if he is part of the Walking Elite or has a barely getting by contraption that needs a screwdriver in the cigarette lighter to start, he will stop by any street corner pick up the latest edition of Cars Magazine and for a few minutes escape into a land where there is a beautiful car on one side and a gorgeous, voluptuous woman on the other.
Women on the other hand don’t know or care about what’s under the hood. All they care about is four things: how the car looks, how much it costs, how it’ll make her feel and how it’ll look to people whose opinions matter.
If a car ticks all four of the above boxes, a woman doesn’t care if the engine is made of titanium and assembled by Swiss engineers of Chinese descent: you had her at $70,000+
What to Do?
This one is quite simple:
1) If the African doesn’t have the car, “that they KNOW they deserve yet,”, then indulge them in their fantasies and continually remind them that one sweet day it’ll happen for them.
2) If they have the car already then just like the degrees, don’t forget to oohh and aaahhhh with delight that can only be compared to the cries of post-apocalyptic angels.
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Happy to be back and looking forward to starting the newest series soon,
😀
Mwangi
Tags: African people, cars, expensive cars, Stuff African people like
Lets see, women and cars? What I’m looking for is a machine to take me from point A to B, as few garage visits as possible, and as non girlish looking as possible. Price, as cheap as I can get….
Ok may be thats the low income talking, lets watch and see if I will develop a taste in expensive cars as I advance economically.
Oh, my dream car is a Toyota Hilux Double cabin pick up.
@Kelly: You are a woman after my own heart. I drove my little Mazda 121 with nothing but absolute pride for the last three years. Rolling in a Mercedes is nice, but so is the fact that I get to roll in a 121 in the first place.
A pickup? Lol! What a novelty? Unless of course you one day want to own your own plot of land in which case it makes perfect sense.
@mwangi, yeah I want to own acres and acres of land, but I find the double cab really powerful. Let me google Mazda 121 right about now!
@Kelly: Let me eliminate the mystery….a Mazda 121 is a small little bubble car that consumes fuel in quite possibly the most efficient way in history.
If a shamba is your dream, then yup, the pickup makes total sense. Google Holden yutes (Aussie slang for pickups)….the horsepower that those machines have is something that must be seen to be believed.
Mwangi, have you considered the fact that the Americans are somehow similar to the African’s in the way they value a car? American love big FUEL consuming cars! (maybe the recent oil crisis may have changed that a little). Africans love big flashy cars. In Nigeria we prefer the customized cars so that it will be “one in town” not to be confused with cars for the commoners. For the politicians, the more expensive the car is, the better, so that their “social status” can easily be acknoweldged. Sounds crazy but that is the reality on ground.
@Tony: I’ve not only considered it but I agree with you. The only thing that separates Americans from Africans though is that Americans seem to love large cars simply on the basis of their size whereas Africans will always go for prestige over the size of the car.
Folks in Naija have definitely taken things to the next level with customization but all African politicians are definitely the same in that they always want the most expensive car around.
Cars have never interested me. For the past 20 years, my thing was bikes. Yeah, I know, in many developing countries bikes are a sign of poverty due to their low cost. This doesn’t stop the Dutch, Belgians, or the Danes from biking, although the exorbitant gasoline prices furthers the preference for bikes.
@Thomas: Biking is actually smart on so many levels particularly exercising, especially in a small city where people don’t exercise like Nairobi so if there is any marketing company that wants to run a “we should bike” campaign in all African urban areas I am behind it………..