Jerseyans so attached to cars they’re naming them
If that headline strikes you as odd, you're actually the oddball. A survey by Shell found most Americans feel their car has a personality and most feel an emotional bond with their car. 56% of men feel their personality is shared by their vehicle and 66% of women feel the same. 21% have even patted their dashboard as if it's a pet.
Okay, but what about naming a vehicle? While most feel an emotional connection most actually don't take it to the point of naming their cars. But 15% of Americans do. Judging by the phone calls we took on the matter on Tuesday's show my gut tells me those numbers are even higher in a car-centric state like the Dirty Jerz.
Both men and women alike, old and young called in to say they had named their cars. Just some examples:
Robin comes from a big Jaguar family. (Must be nice) She had a '98 Jag that was all white and she named it Blanca.
Jerome and his wife had Scions and since they're Game of Thrones fans he named his Daenerys and she named hers Jon Snow. (Hey! What happened to the tradition of cars always being considered female!? Turns out the same Shell survey says 60% of American drivers consider their car a female, but 40% now consider their car a male.)
Colleen's husband has a Chevy S-10 pickup truck, all white, and named it Sugar. Has it all blinged out, too, with chrome everywhere.
Frank called to say his family has owned a ton of Neons. One was named Lulu, and one was named Booty after Bootylicious. Then there's an all red Hyundai named Lucy for a famous redhead, Lucille Ball.
John had a sweet '93 Corvette named Blue. That might sound like a boy's name, but he assured us he thinks of his car as a girl. His wife for some crazy reason names all her cars the same name, Daisy.
Brandon kept the female thing going with his Mustang named Desiree. (Does that car drive around a stripper pole?)
Marissa had a '97 Toyota Camry named JoJo (Does JoJo's Tavern in Hamilton know about this?) and once had a Toyota Corolla named Nala, just because she's a Lion King fan.
Trish called to say her current car is named Georgina, and picked the name before she picked the car. She actually wandered car lots looking for a car that reminded her of a Georgina. No, I'm not kidding. Before that, her dream car, a 2011 Mini Cooper convertible, was named Little Miss Sunshine.
Now I've never really named a car. Well, I did once as a gag because a friend at 18 kept bugging me that my car needed a name, and because it was green I simply named it something purposely stupid. I called it Psychotic Lizard, really just to get him off my back. But I've never named a car since. I do however get emotionally attached to most cars. In fact that moment you trade it in and see it for the last time being driven away is hard, especially if it was the car you remember driving your kids home from the hospital in as newborns, or the car you had on your first date with your wife. Silly maybe, but I get it. Cars are part of our lives, especially with how much time we spend in them here in the Garden State.
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