What Is The Personality Of Your Car

Whereas we have seen a lot of talk about how the car you drive reflects your personal personality traits, have you thought about the actual personalities of the cars themselves? Well, just think “Disney” for a while and all will become clear, they have been liable for bringing us such characters as Herbie and Lightning McQueen in the end.

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Cartoon drawings, special effects and camera trickery aside, recent reports have suggested, well, let’s say confirmed that people do see certain personality traits in various breeds, okay makes and models of motor car.

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Film makers and toymakers have long toyed with our brains to make us believe that cars actually have faces (the window towards the personality), but according to studies we didn’t actually take very much convincing of that anyhow.

It’s about facial expressions – they are said to portray such character traits asanger and aggression, sadness or masculinity and also the opposite traits.

Apparently 90 per cent of cars have got a “”face”” which is often associated with either that of a human or that of an animal. It always goes something similar to this:

• The headlights are the eyes of the face (no surprises there)

• The grill or the emblems can represent the nose

• Any additional air intake slots could be representations in the mouth

Individuals the studies were also asked to rate each of the models shown against 19 different character or personality traits likedominance and friendliness, gender etc., and whether or not they actually liked each car.

Around 96% of the people in the study agreed on whether a particular car was submissive or dominant. This high percentage means that there ought to be a very consistent message being sent outside the “faces” of such cars.

Cars which were felt to have powerful and dominant personality traits had elongated hoods, angular headlights suggestive of a frown and lower slung, pronounced bodies. At the opposite end of this scale the cars which were classified as childlike, female, friendly and submissive had headlights which were even closer to the midline of the design plus an upward shift towards most lateral points from the car. This will make the car look like it is “smiling” – rather like The Love Bug himself.

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It is not unusual for people to discover “faces” in lots of inanimate objects these days. The brain can pick out features in everything from clouds to trees, from the pattern in a stone wall to the way the shadows fall into the cliff. The cabability to “read” faces in this way is deeply rooted, giving us the ability to decide if we are at an increased risk or whether we can relax in the actual existence of a friendly face.

The findings of the study suggested however, that more people “like” cars which are masculine, arrogant, mature and rather angry rather than the friendlier, childlike motors.

It can give pedestrians some idea of the type of person sitting in the driving seat to pedestrians and other road users, even though this doesn’t necessary mean that drivers are interested in buy the particular car which appeals to their personality.

It doesn’t matter whether you are wanting to buy new cars or used cars in Ontario, they’ve got a great selection to choose from at Metro Nissan Redlands.

Go for a walk around the showroom and see if you can identify the personality of every car, and remember that just because you choose something which can be characterized as mean, aggressive and tough it doesn’t really mean that you are a secret warrior . . . although that just might be how the other road users see you.