Things I Hate About The Car Community - And How It Can Be Improved #blogpost

I'll be honest at this point, I was guilty of a few of these in the past, and I'm sure you were/are as well. But we're all in this together and we can improve!

Anyone else watching the World Cup? I certainly am - simply because England is through to the semi finals! Go on, lads!

Heck, I’m not even a football fan. I have no idea who any of the players are and I am alienated to the domestic teams and the premier league nonsense… what I do understand though, is that the culture surrounding the sport is huge and fans are undeniably passionate.

The car community meanwhile, doesn’t tend to bother with any of the beer chucking and smashing up your local tram station malarkey. Compared to football, we are quite chilled out when it comes to events and such.

But that doesn’t mean that infuriating aspects exists, thus putting a really bad name on the car community. This week, I’m going to list some of my pet hates and see how we can all improve upon them:

Judging and stereotypes

One of the things I hate about the car community is the sheer amount of judgements being made, just because of the type of car someone either likes or owns.

Take the Nissan GT-R for example, you won’t have to dive in YouTube comments for long until you find someone commenting that the GT-R is a great car, before some a$$hole replies that the guy is either 12 or ‘not a real car guy’. I mean, is that really necessary? It’s his opinion. Don’t judge!

Often, these judgements lead to stereotypes about the types of people who own particular cars. I’ve driven a fair few BMWs over recent years (including an E34 M5) and with the 323i on the road, I ALWAYS use the indicators! I don’t really understand where that silly joke originated from, but I reckon it’s inaccurate.

How can we improve all of this? Well, just don’t judge people when they have an opinion on something. They’re entitled to it and shouldn’t be ashamed. Silly stereotypes also need to die - which is what the car community needs! (I felt sorry for Mustang owners).

Dangerous driving

Yes, drifting is cool. Yes, burnouts are also cool. And yes, speed is rather good fun. But all these are only cool in the right time and place, aka. NOT public roads!

This is one of the things that makes me cringe about car enthusiasts, and it always seems to happen in car park meets or at the back of a cheap cafe. Drivers will always go to stupid lengths in order to show off and stand out at a show, but fun fact: it’s not cool when there’s children chilling by the barriers!

Honestly, once you see how bloody dangerous these stunts are and how far people are willing to go to get the perfect snapchat video, it’ll make you wonder whether these meets are really worth going to.

But it’s not just meets that people fool around at, it’s public roads in general too. I was driving along the M74 to Glasgow the other week and this tuned Subaru suddenly zoomed past at way over 120mph. Couple this to the showing off chaos, and it’s small wonder non-car people can look at us like street racers. It’s stupid decisions that ruin the image for everyone.

How can we improve here? Simple: just save your exuberant style for safe spaces like tracks, airfields etc. where you have the ability to speed and drift, yet nobody is in danger. How hard can it be?

Flipping and investments

This isn’t something that’s going to change, I don’t think. But car investments are borderline ridiculous these days, and flipping has simply spiraled out of control.

There’s two aspects of this point, so bear with me:

The first is new special edition supercars, it’s sad to see that someone has waited long enough to get a slot in a new car before immediately flagging it up for sale the next morning - sometimes asking double for the bloody slot! Or worse, taking delivery of the car and selling it at stupid money.

I’m not going to point names, but this happened with someone I know here in the U.K with a Porsche GT2 RS - it literally had delivery miles on it! I feel sorry for engineers at these supercar makers because they’ve spent 2 arms and 3 legs on research, development, coffee and continuous testing at the Nurburgring, and the end result is this magnificent piece of engineering sitting still in some rich guy’s garage to ‘keep the mileage down’. I think it’s immoral!

Not only do modern special editions fall as victim to the dafted money scheme, valuable exotic classics are also diamonds to people who just want to make money. This is the one I hate more.

Of course, we can appreciate that more and more people are going to want particular cars, meaning the values will inevitably rise. However, I don’t think that should mean that cars which used for driving, should be used for sitting still.

I once had a look around my local Ferrari dealer earlier in the year, and one of the mechanics told me that a 275 GTS (that was up on the ramp) was being mechanically treated due to the lack of use. He told me that the clutch needed to be refurbished and that the brakes needed bleeding. It was a mint example of a 275 that you’d expect to see running properly! The guy then told me that most of the classics that he works on don’t even get driven often.

Now I don’t want to throw any spanners, but these old cars are meant to be driven! I’ve had experience with old car ownership for years, and you need to keep running them in and not leaving them for extensive periods of time. It’s so sad that these classic cars suffer this fate these days.

How can we fix these? Well Porsche and Ford have obviously made a start, their special edition policies encourage owners to actually drive their cars. Porsche especially will make sure that anyone who flips their car soon after delivery will be made sure to never receive a special edition again from factory. Good stuff!

And a message to valuable classic car owners: we can’t escape from the fact that your cars are very valuable, and prices will only remain high, but for the love of God, PLEASE drive them every now and then! Open up the throttle and run them through the gears on an empty country road and enjoy the bloody things, don’t lock them away and prevent young people from seeing them. Or they’ll never know what it’s like to see an F40 screaming past at the speed of sound.

The influence from YouTubers

Hi guys, I’m Shmee! And today, I’ll be doing some things you shouldn’t be doing! Including driving without insurance and using your phone to upload a story to Instagram!

Okay, ignore the Shmee part, and let’s instead focus on what car YouTubers in general actually do from time to time. And why I’m worried that this might influence their audiences into wrongdoing.

First of which is driving other people’s cars without insurance: I’m not sure if you guys watch channels like TGE TV or anything similar, but there is countless footage of their friends driving other people’s cars without insurance cover - on camera and in areas where coppers are of a pretty high presence…

They may joke about it and say never to do it - which is fair play. However, I don’t think they have any idea of how much their audiences might be influenced by these sorts of activities. And it gets even worse when we head over to Instagram…

One of the things that infuriates me about car YouTubers is that they record themselves driving just for an Instagram story, or to take a picture. Seb Delaney has taken this to the extremes as he was uploading whilst driving, just to get a picture of a McLaren F1 he spotted on the move. There was someone literally in the passenger seat! Why didn’t he just ask that guy to record it??

It baffles me to the bone, and the VERY illegal trend has spread to anyone with an expensive car. If you’re caught using your phone while driving in the UK, you can get 6 points on your licence, and even worse for younger drivers (who are the target audience), your licence is taken away from you instantly.

Seriously, driving while using your phone is not cool. Don’t do it, and we can only mend this area by pleading to the high profile Instagramers to not get their phones out!

Think I’m talking rubbish? Well, I have evidence: check out these screenshots below-

Hate on certain car aspects

It’s understandable to hate on sluggish automatic gearboxes in ‘90s Japanese sports cars which were clearly designed for performance, because they tend to kill the whole experience. I mean, look at Matt’s recent blog on the automatic Honda NSX. His points are undeniably valid (apart from the anchovies bit - I actually like them).

But all over social media, there are constant moronic posts of automatic gearbox hate and why driving one doesn’t make you a man. I’m sick of that kind of thing!

My daily driver is an automatic, but old Mercs just don’t suit manuals. They’re clunky and feel rubbish when changing: I know this after driving a 4-speed manual 240D around a farmyard - really not as smooth as my 230E auto. Hate on automatics in general needs to stop because they shape the character of certain cars. Besides, modern ones are making such great use in sports cars these days, that manuals just aren’t needed anymore. PDK ftw!

Another thing I hate is the relentless hate on turbocharging, downsizing and hybridisation. We just need to accept the fact that things change. We will never get that glorious 5.0 V10 from BMW again, because in every objective way, the turbocharged V8 is way better. The same story applies to Porsche with the boxer 4 in the 718 - that’s a better engine than the flat six it replaces, plus in my eyes, I prefer it over the old 981.

But overall, in terms of the hate on certain car aspects, we really just have to man up. Autos are great most of the time, turbocharging and hybridisation is the way forward, and if you want an old-school naturally aspirated car, then just get one of those rather than moan about new developments. Things change, and enthusiasts need to accept it.

Lastly, some cars are WAY too overrated

I made a preview to this post consisting of a retro photo of an A80 gen Toyota Supra Twin Turbo. Well, assuming you’ve made it through the post to this point, it’s finally time to talk about it.

When hype surrounds a car, people tend to fanboy over it - meaning that car receives a more dramatic image than what actually shows. And the Supra is no exception: and alongside various Skylines and other Japanese stuff, it’s FAR too overrated. And I’m slightly annoyed about that.

If you check out Toyota’s Facebook posts of the Gazoo racing concept thingy, you’ll come across comments of Toyota replying to triggered MK4 fanboys with the patience of God only knows what. The brand is doing something genuinely amazing by building this sports GT car, but they’re only receiving hate because “It’ll never be good without a 2JZ” or “MK4 is the best, this new one will be sh!t”.

Seriously people, Toyota know what they’re doing. And this new 2019 Supra will probably be one of the best cars they’ve ever made, yet the brand is getting constant hate because fanboys without driving licences can’t shut their big mouths. And I’m worried if this will drastically lower impressions once the car is finally revealed - I want them to succeed with this car!

I’m sorry if this turned into a rant about the Supra, but some cars including it are just so overrated, that the car community is just getting mental. We can definitely improve on this by doing 2 things:

1. Don’t restrict yourselves to liking particular cars, why not do some research and gather interest in other types? There are hundreds of underrated cars that really deserve recognition!

2. Have an open mind: worshipping overrated engines like the RB and the 2JZ aren’t going to make life interesting. Feel free to love them, but be sure to support different things and be cool with new developments in the car industry - Toyota’s joint venture with BMW might be the best thing that’ll ever happen to them!

So, there we have it

If you made it this far down, well done, because that must’ve been a long read. It certainly took a long time for me to write!

Nonetheless, those are my personal thoughts on things that I hate about the car community and how we can improve upon them. Overall, I think we need to just chill out, have an open mind and be sensible - which I believe could apply to every one of my points.

If you want to oppose me, leave a comment please!

I don’t normally say this, but if you enjoyed reading, give it an upvote and comment any nonsense. It took me ages to plan and write this and I’d really appreciate feedback :))

Thank you for reading, and hope you enjoyed the blog :)