Don’t Drink and Write — Vernon B. Sarne
If you’re a fan of stereotypes, here’s one from the motoring world: BMW drivers are jerks.
Now, before indignant BMW owners spam my mailbox in protest, let me point out that a 2012 academic study in the US appeared to support this oversimplified view of arrogant men who have a predilection for sporty, expensive cars.
As reported by The New York Times, the probe by University of California, Berkeley, researcher Paul Piff cast an unflattering light on the Bimmer crowd. Observing how motorists reacted to the sight of a pedestrian about to use a crosswalk, Mr. Piff’s team found that “none of the cars in the beater-car category drove through the crosswalk; they always stopped for pedestrians.” Those who tended to ignore foot travelers, the analysts discovered, were behind the wheel of fancy cars. You know, the kind narcissists purchase to showcase their narcissism.
“BMW drivers were the worst,” Mr. Piff was quoted as saying.
You can debate the authenticity or the fairness of the report all you want, but you can’t reverse the validating effect its publication had on the long-held perception that BMW drivers were indeed assholes. In August 2013, when the Times article came out, dozens of automotive Web sites and blogs around the world picked up the story, prompting Lexus and Mercedes-Benz customers to high-five one another.
If this presumption has any shred of truth to it, it deserves some scrutiny, at least among car nerds or middle-aged journalists who will never earn enough fortune to eventually afford even the most compact hatchback the German automaker has to offer. So how does it work? Is this another chicken-or-egg argument: Do douchebags buy BMWs because they’re contemptible human beings to begin with, or do they become douchebags after buying BMWs?
For sure, there’s a case to be made for the former, and BMW is largely to blame for it. Ill-mannered pigs will always gravitate toward flamboyant displays of bravado. And in the auto industry, nothing is flashier than BMW’s brand. In the ’70s, the Munich-based company came up with the haughtiest-ever marketing tag line in the business: “Ultimate Driving Machine.” Translation: “If your car isn’t a BMW, it’s crap. Also, you’ll work for a BMW-riding boss for the rest of your life.”
For four decades now, BMW has been subliminally telling car buyers that the absolute best metal money can buy rolls out of its factory, and that settling for anything less is a craven move reserved only for the feeble. If you’re a winner — if you’re the man — you aspire to a BMW, period. Think about the power of that suggestion for a minute, and you’ll understand how countless alpha males have developed a weakness for the blue-and-white roundel logo.
Even assuming that only a fraction of that self-absorbed demographic manage to put themselves in a BMW cockpit, their uncouth motoring conduct will be conspicuous enough for civil society to take notice. Some incessant honking here, a middle finger there, a lot of cutting in between, and you have a bad reputation for everyone.
In the Philippine market, this impression could be amplified even further with the expected takeover of BMW operations by San Miguel Corp., whose president, Ramon S. Ang, is arguably the strongest (and proudest) alpha male in the car-enthusiast community. Know that this dude won’t let his brand take a back seat to Ferrari or Lamborghini in a Sunday-morning pissing contest. And if entertaining business anecdotes about him are half-true, these are excellent times to be a cocky member of the BMW fraternity.
On the other hand, a case may also be built in favor of the other postulate — that BMW drivers become pricks after their conversion to Bayerische Motoren Werke. My recent week-long dalliance with a voguish X1 sort of backed this up. The small turbocharged diesel crossover, on loan from the official distributor, boasted 190hp and 400Nm from two liters of engine displacement. Those are figures that far exceed whatever anyone residing in Metro Manila might require for urban conveyance. In fact, with the kind of traffic congestion we now deal with on a daily basis, these are specs that are not only superfluous but are also pointless.
Still, there are rare instances when one is briefly presented with a clear stretch of asphalt, fleeting moments when those technical digits are useful and short bursts of speed are feasible. I had such an instance a couple of weeks ago, and the heavens so favored me that day that I was manning the tiller of an agile car. But then I suddenly found myself trailing a popular Japanese MPV while taking a corner, and this vehicle, to my eyes, moved a lot like a tortoise. Just like that and I was angrily (and inexplicably) abusing the X1’s horn pad, as though the other driver deserved to be arrested.
As my borrowed P3.34-million BMW passed the poor MPV, I felt like it had transformed me into a more obnoxious version of Sebastian Vettel, a racing driver who feels everyone else needs to get out of his way. No doubt because I had at my disposal a car so nimble that all others appeared to be in slow motion. Surely, even the meek and humble Kevin Durant would act condescendingly if you made him compete with a bunch of UAAP players.
I can tell you I’m normally not a rude person. But I was on that day, in those few seconds. Just because I was driving the ultimate ego-stroking machine.
You may e-mail the author at vbsarne@visor.ph.
