Let’s cut out the gender crap – cars are the great equaliser

By Shahzad Sheikh

My wife happens to be a member of several car groups on Facebook. She’s not a nerdy petrolhead but she knows what she likes and she has her favourites. And that’s fine. With automotive passion in general on the wane, and teenagers more interested in saving up for smart phones than for their first cars, automobiles need all the love they can get right now.

So she’s scrolling through her timeline and she comes across a picture of a Pagani. Now the Zonda and the Maserati MC12 are her two most favourite supercars. She’s never had a ride in or driven either of these cars (and sadly I haven’t been able to fulfil her wish to do so either, despite all the great cars I do manage to get my hands on from time to time) but she adores their styling, presence and aesthetics.

Upon seeing the Huayra, she couldn’t help herself, so she hit ‘Like’ on the picture and added a comment about Paganis being the best supercars. Now few of us could really have justifiable reason to vehemently disagree because, hey, it’s Pagani – the cars are off-the-scale spectacular, utterly unhinged and surface-bound warp ships.

But then some know-it-all jumps on her and rants about Paganis being McLaren copies, relying on AMG engines and describes them as ‘Elton John with wheels’. He then goes on to berate her that proper supercars are things like Noble M600s.

I guess he thought that would confuse her by bringing up the rare and lesser known Nobles. In fact she does happen to know what a Noble is, and whilst it might drive very well indeed, she finds it plain, dull and inspiring – a complete fail at the most crucial aspects of being a ‘supercar’. And I agree with her.

She hit him back with a well reasoned argument, and from there things got bloody, with the antagonist resorting to outright sexism and revealing himself to be a small-minded (I used the word ‘minded’ instead of describing a piece of male anatomy to avoid offending sensibilities on this page) chauvinist.

I can’t quote exactly what he said because the posts got so vile from here on that they were understandably deleted by the admin, but to paraphrase it was along the lines of ‘tch, women, all they know about is what looks pretty and can take them shopping. They only like superficial things like Tom Cruise.’

Huh?! Why drag poor old Cruise into this? Okay maybe not so ‘poor’, but he is getting on a bit – okay, I’m just jealous really, considering he’s older than I am!

Anyway, I digress, essentially this other poster was clearly affronted that a women had a valid opinion about a car. His further assumption was that she couldn’t know much about cars in depth, so could easily be dismissed as not worthy of commenting on a picture post of a Pagani parked on the streets of London.

Sheeshh! I find this contemptible. This gearhead bigotry was uncalled for, but more crucially, it’s damaging and detrimental to what I call ‘The Cause’ – that being the perseveration of passion and enthusiasm for the automobile – a struggling movement whether you and I will admit it or not.

Cars to me are actually the great equaliser, the great leveller. Whenever I go to car gatherings in the UAE it’s inevitable to encounter a vast mixes of races, religions and colours amongst the owners in attendance, not to mention rich and poor, old and young and, yes naturally, male and female.

The one thing that I love about attending these gatherings, the one thing I find most heartening of all, is that any socio-political, demographic or belief differences fade away as the sheer enthusiasm and delight for the humble car overcomes all prejudices. We all become, simply, car guys.

And I use ‘guys’ in the universal context, not as in the male or female form. Admittedly these things are a sausage fest to a large extent, and I can tell you for a fact that nearly 90% of our readership here is not the fairer sex.

But that’s not the point. That does not mean we can belittle, ignore or take easy pot-shots at women readers and car fans. To the contrary, we need to respect and listen to their opinions too. Here are some facts to back that up for those that still don’t get it. According to one US survey women buy more than half of all new cars and influence up to 80% of all car purchases.

Which is why, whenever we’re asked on the Dubai Eye Radio show (which we do Monday nights with James Piecowye) by a male listener what car he should buy for his wife, our answer is always: ‘ask her!’