Car snobs

Bonne nouvelle pour nos amies et amis snobs à voitures : j’ai trouvé cet article sur le site http://www.autocar.co.uk/ :

I am a snob!  I am not ashamed to admit it!  Sorry Mummy.

Whenever there is discussion in these forums of badges and brands, the S word always crops up.  This is especially true when the subject is the VW group with it's socially stratified Skoda/VW/Audi collection.  It's a successful formula because it's not just me that's a snob.  You are too.  Possibly in a different way, possibly inverted.

Quentin Crisp said that health consists in having the same diseases as your neighbours.  It might equally be said that you are not a snob if you have the same snobbishness as your neighbours.

When I was young, I bought Citroens and Alfas, not just because they drove much better than Ford/Vauxhall/Rootes Group riff raff but also because I was an intellectual snob (Citroen) and an individualist snob (Alfa).  When it was time for the mid level exec company car, I spurned the obvious BMW 520i and picked the Lancia Thema Turbo, again in part because of individualist snobbery (no one's calling me a sheep).  When it was senior exec time, I avoided the thrusting, aggressive BMWs and Mercs and got a wafty XJ6, because I was a don't have anything to prove snob, and the "old man's car" perfectly complemented my small Coach briefcase, which was made of the most sensual leather and said "This man doesn't take work home".

Fifteen years ago I bought an Alvis TE21 convertible in ice blue metallic.  I was aghast when I learned that there was a TV programme in England in which two big girl's blouses drove around in the same thing, I think visiting restaurants.  Then that mother hen to all big girl's blouses, Stephen Fry, drove the same thing in another programme in which he was, I think, a solicitor.  Thank God I was in California, because I am the sort of snob that doesn't want to be thought a wannabe or copycat.

Some of you may give strictly rationalist reasons for recommending a Skoda and not a VW, but that's because you are inverted snobs, or not fooled by marketing into spending more money snobs.  You say what you say because you want to be distinguished from the crowd.  You're a snob.

Aren't you? 

Et voici, un des commentaires:

I have never considered myself a snob until my girlfriend, who kept asserting that I was the most snobbish person she ever met while I kept saying the opposite, gave to me an enjoyable little book written by Antonius Moonen,  "Petit bréviaire du snobisme". Almost everything described there coincided with my living style! If it wasn't possible I have thought that she and Moonen wrote the book together just to make fun of me!

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