5 Signs That Say You’re A Car Guy

There are many signs that say you’re a car guy: the encyclopedic knowledge of car brands and models, the meticulous care you provide to your car, and the tendency to ruin other people’s conversations with brutally technical car talk, just to name a few. Here are 5 other signs that give you away as a car guy:

1. You prefer to do things manually. Whether you know how to do it or not, there’s just an allure to using a manual transmission. Sure a dual-clutch transmission can do things a little bit faster, but there’s just something more fun about manual transmissions. The act of changing gears makes the relationship between you and the car more personal, as if you’re the rider and the car is the horse. Every depression of the clutch and the shifting of the gear lever through its various gates remind you that you are driving, and not just getting to one place. And you also do this for some reason…
2. You perk up when you hear car conversations. Sure your cousin’s new baby is cute and the amount of diaper changes, and eventual baby-proofing to the apartment makes for interesting small talk. However, you can’t help but notice the conversation brewing in the corner of the party about turbo swaps, engine tuning, and tactics to defeat emission tests at the inspection station.
3. Once you make your way to that car conversation, you interject without being asked. There’s a chance they don’t know how turbochargers work or how you almost bought that E46 M3 but decided the Volkswagen GTI was “just a better deal,” it’s better to be safe than sorry!
4. You feel an instant bond with the person driving the same car as you do on the road. In one glance you know that you and the stranger would be best buds if you knew each other. The both of you made the same great decision/mistake in choosing the car you’re driving, and fate has brought the two of you together for this short journey on the road. Sometimes you look over and nod. Sometimes you take the extra effort to roll down the window and throw a wave and a quick rev. The EVO and WRX/STI-bros have it the worst, because if they don’t wave at each other, kittens will die.
5. Engine revs and exhaust notes give you ear-boners. Why else would you roll down the window and rev your engine in a tunnel? Why else would you chase down that supercar that just passed you on the highway? And what other reason can you think of for downshifting and rev matching? You tell others you wanted to stay in the powerband, but you really wanted to feed your ears with some sweet howls of whatever it is that’s hiding in the engine bay. And speaking of ear-boners, here’s one for the history books, skip to 22:15