Here Are The Various Categories Office Employee Vehicle Owners Fall Into

"Torque Affair" (torqueaffair) 09/06/2015 at 10:08 • Filed to: OFFICE EMPLOYEES

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When you’re spending the majority of your waking hours in a cubicle, you think about a lot of things. Things like...Why am I in a cube and not in an office? Where are we going to lunch? Is it 5 pm yet? Why do they even bother with a 1% raise?

Sometimes something is not better than nothing. A 1% raise is like punch in the gut. “Thanks for all your hard work this past year and to show our appreciation, here’s a tank of gas.”

Spending all this time in cubicle farms has allowed me to arrive at some brilliant, well-thought out and astute observations about folks working in corporations and why they own the kinds of cars that they do.

Now, before you begin reading this for a full five seconds before clicking on a youtube video of a dog licking an elephant’s trunk, let me kindly ask you to put on your stereotyping goggles. This will allow you to forget about any exceptions that belong to these generalizations I am about to make (which is my specialty) and suppress any rage you might be inclined to feel.

So here you go: below are the various categories that company employees who own cars generally fall into.

The “Must Get A Badass Car Straight Out Of College” One

Some young adults, or should I say kids, graduate college and find themselves at a job where they’re getting paid more than they ever have been in their lives. After living it up in college, attending one party after another and drinking thousands of shots of Tequila, they finally find themselves entering the real world. However, their first impression of reality sours instantly as they come to a realization of how much they don’t like their job.

“Why the hell did I study corporate finance?”

There is only one way to solve first world problems like this which the new grads figure out quickly. Spend every cent you make, or better yet, spend money you don’t have!

As a new college grad in some kind of a corporate job, the number of digits you see on your first paycheck is nothing short of astounding and can truly make you feel rich. All is well indeed until you show up to work and spend your entire day staring at mind-numbing excel spreadsheets. You would rather poke your eyeball with a pen than to create the thousandth chart.

As soon as it’s 4:55 pm, you run out of your office building and head straight to the dealer to lease a brand new CTS-V for $900 a month. You tell yourself: “Psshhh, that’s just money out of one paycheck. I’ll get a whole other one in a couple weeks.”

I would argue that this is probably the most favorable time in a person’s life to buy a car, because when you’re in your early 20s, you can be a true idiot and get away with just about anything. In your third decade of being alive on this planet, you can have fun buying the CTS-Vs and the 911s and whatever else strikes your fancy before reality sucks all the joy and life out of you.

YOLO - you live only once!

The Practical One

We all know these folks. These are your colleagues who always show up to work on time, buy heavily discounted clothes from Kohl’s and bring tupperware full of the previous night’s leftovers from home providing a variety of aromas during regularly scheduled lunchtime food-heating sessions.

They are truly model citizens. They are frugal and don’t care one bit about what they drive. I work with one of them.

He is the proud owner of a 15 year old Corolla that his parents bought for him when he was in high school. It has almost 200,000 miles on it and has been a reliable source of transportation during all these years. The Corolla has been through the best of times and the worst of times but the now, the time has finally come for the car to be put to rest.

These days, the rearview mirror in the car falls off every other day and injures a random body part. My colleague just glues it back up again until a pothole in the road knocks it right off the windshield. The car’s shocks barely work and the front passenger door cannot be opened from the inside which means that the only way to exit the car is to roll down the window, stick your hand outside the door and pull on the exterior door handle. The car still runs and as far as my co-worker is concerned, that’s good enough.

He hasn’t had a car payment in so long that I’m not sure if he could handle one at this point. This Corolla will be driven until the engine falls out of the car.

There are many office workers who have a similar mentality and are financially wise to think this way. If a car is only a means of transportation to you, then, by all means, there is no need to buy anything fancy. Buy a house instead and spend $25,000 the following year to replace the roof.

As an auto enthusiast, I’m the anti-practical devil on their left shoulder always whispering: “Dump this POS and buy yourself a 997 911 instead…NOW!”

The Prius Owner

Some office people really love to own these things but why? Priuses are universally considered to be slow and unattractive and there are so many other alternatives available now. Yet people continue to buy them in droves making Priuses about as commonplace as Civics. People that own these cars are really wanting to make a statement with all of their bumper stickers and horrible-tasting green juices: “Hey look at me, I love the environment so much I blend it up and drink it!”

Prius owners are also the same folks that are buying bottled water for $6 that have asparagus sticks in them and organic egg white chips from Whole Foods. Next time someone offers you Kale Ice Cream at work, ask them what they drive. It will probably be a Tesla.

The “Status-Hungry” One

A good chunk of dedicated office employees fall into this category because whereever you go, whoever you talk to, success must ooze out of every pore of your body. That’s right, even your body odor must appear to be successful. Without achieving success, you are worthless.

It’s like what Donald Trump preaches. He asks: do you want to be like me? Easy - buy a Trump tie, pay me $40K to attend Trump University, get a Trump tattoo and I will brand you as a Trump disciple. Shortly afterwards, you will be a billionaire like me.

Absolutely not. In fact, Trump would have made more money if he took his dad’s forty million dollars that he inherited and invested that into an S&P500 index fund rather than try to generate his own wealth. Read this, if you’re interested to uncover the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! here.

There is so much pressure to keep up with the Joneses. If you live out in the burbs and all your neighbors own Land Rovers, Jaguars and Porsches, how could you possibly live with your 10 year old Camry? It’s shameful to pull up in that, when your next door neighbor just bought a brand new Audi A7. Buy a 320i; it’s got a BMW badge, is more affordable and will give you at least a modicum of status.

Out in the corporate world, status is rubbed in your face, from your job title to the size of your cube in the office - if you sit in two cubes merged into one positioned next to a window then you’re really knocking it out of the park!

An office parking lot has tons of these “status” cars. They’re parked wherever, usually squeezed in between a dented old pickup and a 30 year old Bronco that was picked up at a junkyard. The only thing that matters with your car, of course, are the Olympic rings that are on the front grill.

The Ultimate Family Man

This is the person who drives a banged-up van, or a used large SUV - something that is supposed to be roomy and yet has no space inside because it’s filled with garbage. As soon as you open the door, broken toys, McDonald happy meal bags, dirty socks and torn cardboard boxes spill out of the car. The owner is too tired to worry about this, and when you go to lunch, you will do anything to avoid stepping foot inside the kid mobile.

“Hey, how about I drive? Parked it closer anyway.”

Sure!

These are cars that you will find sprinkled all over the parking lot with owners who are so tired that they can barely function.

The “One-Upper” One

This is generally the person who can’t stand the thought of not being perceived as the most “well-off” out of the bunch and will do anything to change that.

Let’s assume that John is one of those guys whose insecurity has reached new heights recently. He has a circle of ten friends and acquaintances who he regularly plays poker with. John also spends a significant amount of time comparing himself to his buddies by measuring their relative calf and bicep sizes.

“Dude, I just curled 135 pounds the other day - 10 reps.”

After every workout, his roid-filled ego immediately deflates as he leaves the gym and walks up to his lowly and embarrassing Honda CR-V. All of his friends drive either a Mercedes or an Audi.

When John finally reaches his breaking point, he decides to buy a Porsche, but not just any Porsche. No, he wants to buy the highly revered and expensive GT3 just because it represents the creme de la creme of the Porsche world. He could care less about how it drives, or the fact that it’s one of the greatest cars ever built. He will buy this, even if it means that he has to take every last dollar out of his bank account and stop paying his 15-year old kid’s weekly allowance. His son can work for free - spoilt bastard.

Unfortunately for John, the day after he buys the car, his best friend buys a million dollar Veyron. Nooo! Where the hell did he get all that money? As soon as John hears this news, he heads to the muscle pill store to load up on even more steroids to ensure that he can at least out-bench everyone he knows. If he can’t have the nicest car, then, by god, he will be the strongest.

The “I’m Being Practical But Not Really” One

This is someone who buys the fully loaded version that makes a practical car like the Honda Accord or the Ford Fusion completely impractical. For example, this fully-loaded Fusion comes with the “Terracotta” interior package, cooled seats, rear DVD entertainment system and retails at almost $40K. This one is extra special since it is equipped with the soft-sided cooler bag with an adjustable strap.

Now this is a car that you could easily get for $25K, but because you wanted to get everything possible, a reasonably priced family car is now, all of a sudden, worth as much as an entry level BMW 3-series or an Audi A4. Owning a $40K Fusion means that you are no longer the practical car owner you once thought you were.

Wouldn’t you rather be driving around in a 3-series BMW with that kind of money?

The Questionable Auto Enthusiast Who Probably Has OCD

These people seem like car enthusiasts but are probably more obsessive compulsive than anything else because they have something like an immaculate, dingless, super shiny Kia Rio parked really really really far away. You could actually take a shuttle to your Rio and not feel bad about it because it quite literally is 2.5 miles away from your cube.

These folks probably don’t care one bit about what they drive (or maybe they do - it’s a dubious distinction) but they need it to be absolutely spotless. They carry around a micro-fiber towel to wipe off a cat hair if they find one clinging to the exterior. Their pens are arranged perfectly on their desk and all of their computer cables are neatly wrapped up together with zip ties. Their TV remote at home is still in its original plastic wrapper.

And Finally…The Actual Auto Enthusiast

Of course, every office contains some number of auto enthusiasts. These guys are easy to spot because they always park together in a distant empty corner of the parking lot. I’m one of them. When we catch sight of each other in the parking lot, we generally huddle around our cars and giggle like school girls.

This is, naturally, my favorite group of people to be around no matter where I work. If I had it my way, everyone I work with would be an auto enthusiast. In fact, my goal in life is turn everyone I meet into one. This way, I can get rid of all the categories I mentioned above and just have one all-encompassing group remaining - office employees who love cars - and that’s it.

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!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is about exploring my fascination with cars; I’m always on the lookout for things that interest me in the car world.

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Chris Li > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 10:11

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I know a prius guy

Wobbles the Mind > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 10:24

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“YOLO - You live only once”

This describes everything about the out of college bunch.

G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 10:27

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My dad worked an Administrative job at a hospital. He drives a Toyota Echo. Where does that put him?

Torque Affair > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 09/06/2015 at 10:34

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I’m assuming the “practical owner”, but if not, then the “everything else” bucket.

Wobbles the Mind > G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 09/06/2015 at 10:34

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Deserving of a midlife crisis.

qbeezy > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 10:36

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I can see this everywhere in my parking lot. Though it’s mostly trucks and CUVs/SUVs.

G_Body_Man: Sponsored by the number 3 > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 10:44

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The thing is, he hasn’t really let the Echo fall apart, like the Practical Owner has with their corolla.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 11:05

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I wonder which pigeon-hole I would fit in. My truck is 21 years old with 268,000 miles and was driven daily until last year. Makes me the Practical guy, right?

Then I bought a WRX - chosen because it was fast, AWD, and had enough room to carry teenagers in the back. Mid-life crisis guy? I’m not driving a ‘vette. Car enthusiast? Perhaps....

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 11:54

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I’m the guy who just sort of accidently had a nice car fall right into his lap.

Torque Affair > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 12:09

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practical + auto enthusiast is the best bucket!

NotRichBMWOwner > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 12:20

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Sounds like me. Took a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee, that I beat the hell out of, with 286k miles to junk yard. Bought a 335i for all the same reasons you mentioned. I would put you in the car enthusiast group. Cars change when our tastes change.

Long Live the Longdoor > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 12:22

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Hmmm, the practical one describes me, but i just bought a new Accord Coupe base; not sure where that lands me now lol.

Torque Affair > Long Live the Longdoor 09/06/2015 at 12:31

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Congrats - you didn’t get the fully loaded version! Now, just hold onto it for many many years without making car payments after it’s paid off and you’ll be the ultimate practical car owner!

TheRealBicycleBuck > NotRichBMWOwner 09/06/2015 at 13:14

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Took it to the junk yard? Must’ve been bad.

Tastes didn’t change much for me. I found the opportunity to get a fast car which I always wanted and kept a functional truck which is much more practical.

DipodomysDeserti > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 13:32

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I think you’re still practical guy. The WRX is the most practical sport car out there.

TheRealBicycleBuck > DipodomysDeserti 09/06/2015 at 15:16

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I prefer being practical guy over mid-life crisis guy. Thanks for making my day!

Long Live the Longdoor > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 16:53

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Ya, I didn’t see a lot of value in spending $3k for leather, nav and some safety crap that I’d likely turn off anyways. I intend to keep it for a really long time, so there, practicality!

NotRichBMWOwner > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 17:20

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It needed a new ring and pinion gear, all the joints, the motor was low on compression and stalled randomly. It was in bad shape but I bought it for $500 in college and put 90k miles on it. Some day I’ll get another beater Jeep to hop around the woods with.

TheRealBicycleBuck > NotRichBMWOwner 09/06/2015 at 18:18

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Sounds like you got your money's worth. I always wanted a beater 4x4 for more adventurous camping trips.

NotRichBMWOwner > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 18:24

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There is an off-road park I went to in Harrison Michigan a couple times. I was able to do almost all the trails. The best part was being able to flog the crap out of it and not worry about breaking or beaching it because it only cost $500.

BLCKSTRM > Torque Affair 09/06/2015 at 18:55

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Any good Subaru definitely belongs in the practical + auto enthusiast bucket.

Right there with my E36 M3/4/5. The rear doors make it easy to put the Tupperware with the leftovers in the back footwell so they don’t slide around so much on the way to work.

TheRealBicycleBuck > NotRichBMWOwner 09/06/2015 at 19:53

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A guy at work took his new Wrangler Unlimited on vacation. He spotted an off-road park and decided to give it a go. They rate twit trails from one to five. He ended up doing a level 4 trail backwards without any self-rescue gear. No winch, no bumper jack, not even a tow strap.

Somehow he made it through without damaging his Jeep, but he had several close calls. The pictures are hilarious.

He can't wait to go back with the proper gear and without the girlfriend.

NotRichBMWOwner > TheRealBicycleBuck 09/06/2015 at 20:18

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It’s a ton of fun. Tag along if you like the guy. Even riding shotgun it is an experience. I would love to find an old wrangler sport to putz around with but they hold thier value too well. Some day when I have enough cash around for an off-road toy I will get one.

TheRealBicycleBuck > NotRichBMWOwner 09/06/2015 at 22:14

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I used to ride quads in the desert and I've been 4-wheeling with several friends. I've never been rock crawling, but one day I will!

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Torque Affair 09/07/2015 at 01:56

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I bought a used family sedan. It just happens to be RWD, have 400+ hp and a manual, and revs past 8000...

Torque Affair > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 09/07/2015 at 07:47

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Impala SS?

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Torque Affair 09/07/2015 at 10:48

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Hahaha - nope.

E90 M3. Love it.

Spasoje > Torque Affair 09/27/2015 at 18:19

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My neighbor is one of these. He spent his inheritance on a $50k Honda Pilot to ‘match’ the Volvo we have. He’s also proven to be a colossal asshole, but that’s a story for another day... Then again, I guess that’s what this type tends to be.

Torque Affair > Spasoje 09/27/2015 at 18:27

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Hahah...man. He should’ve spent that money on a Porsche Cayenne or something!

kaykicing > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 09/27/2015 at 22:30

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What do you mean?

caddyak > Torque Affair 09/28/2015 at 10:22

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Hmm... Where do I fall with my E39 M5?

I am clearly an auto enthusiast, and that’s why I bought it. But I keep it around for practicality.

No, I’m serious. Stop laughing! It’s practical!

The electronics may be wonky, but it has never let me down and I would (and often do) drive it across the country, even with 160k miles. It’s got 4 doors, is pretty safe, comfortable on the highway and has all the creature comforts I want in a car. But the real kicker? Negative depreciation.

My car is kinda rough around the edges. Just this month a short developed and gave the windows minds of their own. My solution? Disconnect every window besides the drivers (so I can still pay tolls and get my Dunks in the morning).

I keep a roof rack on it and towels in the back seat, because although I really need an SUV in my life, I can get by with throwing towels over the leather and tossing in some lumber/furniture/bodies/animals/camping supplies or whatever.

And I even used to drive for Lyft in it, because sometimes you’ve gotta make ends meet.

I’m going to drive it until the wheels fall off because I like it and don’t want a car payment. I just get the bonus of owning something unique that still draws stares and gets stop light compliments (when I could roll down the windows, that is).

Segador > qbeezy 09/28/2015 at 10:43

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What I love are my co-workers who scoff at my “fancy and pricy” used BMW, then climb into their $60k F250 Platinum Harley King Ranch.

Torque Affair > caddyak 09/28/2015 at 22:06

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you’re definitely a “practical enthusiast”! How much do you spend yearly on the E39 in maintenance? I’ve seen a few in the high teens that look appealing but just wondering how much maintenance costs would amount to.

caddyak > Torque Affair 09/28/2015 at 22:50

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Oil changes are every 7k and run about $120 doing it yourself.

Rear tires last about 15k miles. Fronts 30-40k, assuming you buy proper performance tires.

I’ve not had to do brakes or clutch since owning it.

Throw in another $500-1000 for miscellaneous bullshit like window motors (basically a wear item on BMWs), replacement sensors , cooling components, lights, wiper blades, filters, etc.

I’ve not had any major repairs on my car that I couldn’t do myself with limited skill and tools (well, except for tracing that window fault).

One day VANOS seals or the clutch will eventually need replaced and that’ll cost about $1500 for either.

qbeezy > Segador 09/29/2015 at 09:01

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Lol and it will never be used other than to haul their Xmas presents on black Friday

Tommyalanson > Torque Affair 12/06/2015 at 18:14

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That’s all right on. I drive an e30 to work every day. Giggle.