I believe, to an extent, a person’s car can indeed convey his or her personality. I drive a 14 year old VW that I’ve owned since new. What does it say about me? Perhaps that I value the dependability and low-maintenance it’s provided. I take care things longer than the average person. I have high standards (it has heated leather seats, sunroof, VR6 motor, etc), but feel no need to rush out and replace it with the current top of the line car, when all the amenities still work just fine.
Personally, I think what we value about our cars can reflect our priorities in life. Occasionally, when I’m getting to know someone on the first or second date, I’ll ask about the car she drives. Why she chose it, what she likes and doesn’t like about it, and what she’ll replace it with. One can discern a lot, does she seek excitement or dependability? Does she place a greater emphasis on content delivered or image conveyed? Aside from a home, a car is the second largest purchase many of us will make, and I think our decision process does shed quite a bit of light on our priorities in life, thus — to an extent — our personality.
But there’s a difference between a personalitity traits and a character traits (or to a larger extent, identity). I think the mistake observers may make is not the attempt to identify personality traits through our choice of automobile, but rather the attempt assign a value or judgement to the personality traits observed. It’s the judgement of others (or worse, the prejudice of forming an opinion without understanding the full picture of that person’s life) that tends to lead observers astray in their assessment of — and attitude toward — others.
In the quoted article above, an interviewee suggested the purchase of Hummer reflected the existence of “a hole in the soul” of Arnold, that he attempted to fill by the material purchase of a Hummer. Fine, entirely plausable. But the speaker needs to realize that such holes can be found in many types of people, and that material band-aid could be anything: Hummer, hybrid, Harley, Honda, whatever.
Sure, our personality can be discerned by our consumption habits and the decision process behind them. But our /character/ is defined by our actions toward others and the world around us, not our purchases. The eagerness to assign (or convey) an identity and judge someone’s character through his purchases is probably a result of living within such a comsumption-oriented culture, where many people don’t know how to assess (or express) themselves otherwise.
