so you missed the new york times’ piece on the freudian analysis ofcertain auto drivers? lucky for you, i got a little bookmark backlog going on:

“Yet a growing body of research by automakers is finding that buyers of these two kinds of vehicles are very different psychologically. Sport utility buyers tend to be more restless, more sybaritic, less social people who are “self-oriented,” to use the automakers’ words, and who have strong conscious or
subconscious fears of crime. Minivan buyers tend to be more self-confident and more “other-oriented” — more involved with family, friends and their communities.”

“Dr. Rapaille looks at the intellectual, emotional and “reptilian,” or instinctual, reasons why people buy consumer products. He said sport utilities are designed to be masculine and assertive, often with hoods that resemble those on 18-wheel trucks, vertical metal slats across the grilles to give the appearance of a jungle cat’s teeth and flared wheel wells and fenders that suggest the bulging muscles in a clenched jaw.

Sport utilities are designed to appeal to Americans’ deepest fears of violence and crime, Dr. Rapaille said. People’s earliest associations with sport utilities are wartime Jeeps with machine guns mounted on the back, he explained. Sport utilities are “weapons” and “armored cars for the battlefield,” he said.”

no – unfortunately we don’t get a pop psych treatment of the station wagon market. bummer.

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