The Rallier
As I sat down with my roommate Steven we began to reminisce about the romanticism of car culture. Steve was a fellow car enthusiast who like myself participated in the audience side more than the actual racing. He began by talking about his past rally experience and how picturesque it was. Steven enthusiastically described it as speeding down twisting and turning mountain roads in upstate New York in a beautiful Aston Martin Vantage surrounded by imposing trees and brush. I ask him how he feels about street racing and whether he felt as if his rally experience would qualify as street racing. He starts his response by defining a rally. “My rally was simply a drive through the mountainside, since there was no need to pass the cars in front I wouldn’t consider it to be racing.” He goes on to say how he envisions street racing to be when people illegally congregate on a public road to race their modified civics, something complete polar to his experience.
I then asked him whether he felt as if car meets bred further illegal behavior. He again separated what he considered the difference between rally racing and illegal racing. In rally racing he explained how often the drivers were multimillionaires, and how with an entrance fee upwards of $50,000 the drivers were not willing to jeopardize their fun and therefore keep themselves under control. On the other side, though he pictured the illegal street racers as a careless breed who should not be allowed to race and act the way hoons do. I questioned further, asking how does it justify one group to race, and another to not if the latter group were just emulating the former, and the only difference was their economic prosperity. He stopped and thought for a while. He responds, “I think it’s a cultural thing,” saying how certain cultures have less regard for the law and probably grew up challenging authority, so are unable to understand where to draw the line. |
As I notice a bit of prejudice and see where this conversation could go, I gently angle the conversation in a new direction asking what he thinks about police intervention. He says it’s needed when done in an illegal way. I ask him to explain further and he depicts a scene where my other interviewee Greg lives. He talks about meets and races full of modified civics and other inexpensive, where people race for adrenaline and have appear to have a disregard for other drivers.
I then ask him about what he thinks about media’s portrayal of cars. He talks about how the media portrays reckless teenagers as negative influences, but the wealthy as heroes. He uses the news story of the wealthy individual in Portland who is giving rides to sick children in supercars, and how the rallies often are done in the name of charity and raise significant funds to them. As I talked with him, a gap between the wealthy drivers and middle and lower class drivers became increasingly clear. Steve stuck to his right and wrong mentality where those with the means to obtain the correct permits and call their race a rally were saints, and those who did not, represented all that was wrong with car culture. Even when I questioned him on his opinion of modifications, he viewed the customization done by people as harmful to the sanctity of them, but when done by expensive reputable sources, often from the manufacture themselves, they are unequally unique. This is where I differ from Steven, while he views cars as perfect creatures straight from the dealer. I view stock cars as only the base where they can be indefinitely changed to fit a drivers wants. This shows, although as car enthusiasts we can disagree on many of the practices within the culture, we are both gear heads at heart and mind, and come together to share our joy that comes from our hobby. |