“She had the smell of a brand-new car, and that’s about the finest smell in the world…except maybe for p*ssy.”
John Carpenter’s 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic Christine opens with a manufacturing line, steaming and clanking with testosterone. Viewers can taste pheromones in the air, feel sweat congealing on fresh coats of paint, and mingling with ejaculated diesel. Masculinity epitomised, men in overalls smoking their cigars and wielding their tools, swarm around a sexy scarlet Plymouth Fury. The cinematographer euphemistically draws attention to different parts of the vehicle: her arched metallic back, her winking wing-mirrors, her firm leather seats, her gaping orifices. King’s story sees the touch-starved Arnie Cunningham, perhaps a prophetic rendering of the incels we now know and love, sucked into a sexual and murderous obsession with the haunted car ‘Christine’ – chaos ensues. However this vehicular feminisation may cause us to contemplate the feminisation of cars everywhere. What is it exactly about a car that men find so affirming, and so very alluring?
Broadening our cinematic gaze, we might note the multitude of films – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being an excellent example – that depict unsettling love affairs between a man and his ride. This manifests in the real world too, as entire Reddit forums are devoted to women who feel they are third-wheeling within their own marriages, and a sizeable proportion of divorcees cite a car as one cause for their separation. Perhaps the seductive Sedan beckons the boyfriend into the garage for hours on end because she can be whatever he wants her to be, shapeshifting under the weight of his hand. One source on media platform Men’s Health defended his own descent into petrol-passion, pleading that ‘by the time I was finished, she was exactly as I wanted her, my Galatea.’ Like Pygmalion himself, he was able to piece together bent pipes and whirring gears to construct his vision of mechanical and feminine perfection. Evidently, there is a lust for control involved here.
Self-proclaimed ‘high-value male’ Andrew Tate is a gentleman known for his relationships with women and automobiles, being probed by one particular interviewer: ‘do you have more cars or girlfriends?’ Regularly, his analogies draw comparisons between the vehicular and dating worlds. Most notoriously, he describes how he would not let his woman attend a nightclub event, in much the same way he would not leave his Lamborghini (one of his ‘many cars’ as he does not fail to remind us) in an area with an elevated crime rate. He clarifies that his statement is not rooted in insecurity or domestic abuse because ‘one of the best things about being a man is being territorial, being able to say THAT IS MINE.’ Of course, Tate is luckily no longer terrorising our motorways, as he is currently in custody. Let’s just say he’s involved in more than just road traffic.
Whatever the case, Tate’s objectifying comments certainly aren’t the first time that this metaphor has been used, with notions about a woman’s ‘mileage’ or being ‘run-down’ appearing for as long as cars have existed. And vice versa, a man may ‘trade’ his partner for ‘a newer model’ harbouring more ‘junk’ in the proverbial ‘trunk’. In the crushing wake of the recent election, we might consider Donald Trump’s infamous line: ‘grab ‘em by the p*ssy’. Chauvinists want something they can ‘grab’, something they can seize, possess, master. And indeed, the mechanic who inserts his groping fingers underneath Christine’s bonnet early on in the movie’s runtime has them vengefully pulverised moments later. The car, as a commodity, is more than merely functional; it connects intimately with the holder’s image and status. Like a beautiful woman, a beautiful car might be a pawn within the forging of a man’s public identity. Trump himself owns several vehicles, all of which prioritise glam and swank over practicality. However, unlike a woman, a car submits utterly to the control of the driver. She will not argue back; she will not disobey. Any time of the day or night one can rev her up, grease her wheels, and ride that good old highway to hell. With his fist fondling the gearstick, or jamming a petrol pump into the fuel port, a man loves his car because it stands in passively for his sexual and egotistical fantasy. She is the sultry concubine who knows when to shut up, purring only at his command, but also erotically fulfilling his sense of manhood in the sphere of discourse.