I suppose, deep down within us all lies the potential to be a jerk. I’d like to believe that for most of us, these latent seeds of jerkiness remain in their dormant phase, held in check by your cell’s natural anti-jerkiness organelles, the dejackassochondria and the endoplasmic de-redickulum, the one with the ribosomes on them. But that doesn’t mean the jerkiness doesn’t exist. It just means it’s held in check, precariously, and we must all accept that those checks and balances could – and can – fail.
Sometimes it’s stress or general life pressures that wear us down and allow the jerkiness to escape. Sometimes it’s other people. And other times, yes, it can be a car.
A car! That most glorious of machines, the most worthwhile product of human endeavor, yes, even a car can be the catalyst that brings out your Inner Jerk. And not just any inner jerk: your inner driving jerk.
For me, the car proved to be a Lotus. Not the lovely old Lotus above, which I just stuck in here for the hell of it, but a 2014 Lotus Evora I had for a week back when I worked at the Old Site to do one of my Will It Baby stories, back when my kid still fit that description.
The car was phenomenal to drive, and it just felt so damn good when you pushed it. It was a car that really worked with you to make driving engaging. The problem was you had to sort of be in an engaging driving situation to take advantage of it. And that meant this car helped unleash some really jerky driving habits in me, just to force engaging driving situations.
Did I weave in and out of slower traffic like I was in a rally just because it felt so damn good? I sure did. Did I take off too fast at stoplights and send it into highway on-ramps at twice the legal speed just to get that sensation through the wheels and pedals, to feel my body shift with the weight of the car, to be intoxicated by the speed and control and visceral feeling of the car as a prosthetic, and extension and enhancement of your own body?
Did driving like that make me a jerk? Absolutely. A big jerk.
Now, I’m very used to occasionally driving cars with performance well above my daily driver. My daily has 52 horsepower; it’s a pretty low bar. So I often find myself unwittingly speeding in press cars, but I’m still not driving like an absolute jerk, like I did in that Lotus. Even in really powerful, fast cars, I can usually contain myself. In those, it’s not so much that I drive like a jerk as it is that I feel frustrated, because having to hold back a 500+ hp car in traffic has all the joy of stopping peeing mid-stream. It’s frustrating.
But that Lotus! That wonderful, intoxicating Lotus, it made me a stupid jerk, and I love it for that, but I’m also glad I don’t own one, because I’d feel guilty all the time, knowing what a jackass I am on the road. Our own Mercedes drove one fairly recently, and I think she would back me up here.
Maybe I’d get used to it? Maybe. Luckily, I can’t afford a Lotus, so I think the roads are safe from one more jerk, at least for a while.
Not a car, but any quick, nimble motorcycle. I lose all patience for other drivers and the ability to just not deal with them is intoxicating. I wouldn’t be one of those people that split lanes at 70 mph, but for some other situations… And that’s the reason why I can’t and don’t own a more sporty bike than I do.
Same. I’m not overtly assholeish weaving through traffic going 120mph, but I will get around traffic as efficiently as possible.
I always found that this propensity was increased when I was high.
Like I forgot I was a meatbag on a ridiculously overpowered, two-wheeled machine.
The Evora has been my theoretically attainable dream car since it came out, and that will it baby article stoked the flames. Realistically never could afford a Lotus but I’m currently a stay at home dad rocking a BRZ thanks to those articles! As an overly practically minded car enthusiast I really loved the will it baby series, and I’m convinced that the bulk of modern car seats are a bigger factor in the decline of sports cars/coupe sales than anyone realizes.
Whatever I Was driving from 1994 until about 2011. With lots of spillover into like 2015.
I’ve calmed the hell down a lot in the past ten years. Even going from my slow Civic to my much faster Si Civic ‘m just much calmer in general.
We coined a term for this back in the dark ages of the Internet: SPOD Stupid Pissed Off Dork, it’s a pretty apt description for the first 35ish years of my life.
Any car I happen to be driving at the moment. I don’t know what it is, but when I get behind the wheel of ANY car (or truck, or minivan, or SUV, or moving truck), I become innately aware of how bad ALL THE OTHER DRIVERS are on the road as they impede my travel.
Subarus. When other people drive them in front of me. Since I know that person will be dawdling in the passing lane, oblivious of legal right turns on red, and terrified of pulling into traffic until there is a half mile gap between cars, I do everything I can to make sure I get in front of them. If that means I gotta be a jerk for a few minutes, so be it. They are a menace on the road!
In defense of subarus, they don’t have the power to pull out into a gap smaller than that.
Ha! I have taken that into consideration but based on all other behaviors, I believe the driver is just absolutely terrified to enter traffic or lacks the ankle strength required to flex their accelerator foot enough to merge safely.
Rental cars.
My own DS recently turned me into driving like a jerk. The old 2.0 with a very worn camshaft was overhauled and upgraded to the ‘big block’ 2.3, the biggest option you could get in a DS. I was used to drive it with the pedal to the floor to go with the flow, but that style of driving now results in me constantly driving up to the rear bumper of the car in front of me. I even called it a racecar the first day of driving the big block, a description the DS is certainly not worthy of.
Also, switching from either the DS or the C3 to the tuned 2.5T V70 you will be the jerk if you do not adapt to feathering the throttle.
As always, the answer is MX5.
The MX5, and I assume a lot of naturally aspirated ‘sporty’ cars, comes alive in higher rev ranges. It just feels unhappy chugging around at low rpm.
This, in part, drew me to EVs. My current cooper SE is as happy at speed as the MX5, but it calms down and becomes a comfy commuter when the roads are not clear.
I wouldn’t say a given car makes me drive like a Jerk. However there are cars that make the speed demon in me come out (even relatively slow ones).
What I’ve found that most satiates it are RWD cars that I can power slide with. With the right car with the right corners you can power slide at school zone speeds.
Though I imagine everyone who goes 10+ under the speed limit thinks I drive like a jerk when I’m 1 car length behind them.
I’m a very boring, safe, law-abiding driver, with a few exceptions that explain why I always buy much more displacement and/or torque and HP than I need; to wit:
* in a bigger city with terrible drivers, like Oakland or San Francisco: I understand that you’re lost, sightseeing, old, or stupid, but I’m not going to be stuck behind you if it’s legal to get ahead. Never unsafe, but assertive like you need to be in big city traffic.
* on a highway if you’re driving dangerously, I will get the fuck out of harm’s way without any hesitation. If you’re tailgating, I’ll punch it and change lanes if it’s safe so you can pass me, since that’s obviously what you want. About half the time, the asshole actually slows down and doesn’t try to catch up. Shrug.
* in one of my old, grossly overpowered MBs, if the road is clear and there are no pedestrians or animals about, I have been known to perform the occasional Italian tuneup.
The rest of the time, I drive like a high school classics teacher from Wisconsin.
It’s going to be a cliché, but it’s my bimmer that turns me into … Well … A BMW driver.
That M54B30 just begs to be revved and I really turn into an ass when I drive it.
I won’t stop being one though.
I got a BMW a decade or so ago – I didn’t realize how quickly my driving style changed until I rented a Prius for a weekend and nearly died because I didn’t realize how much I’d come to rely on my car’s acceleration and handling to get me out of stupid situations.
So, yes, I drive like an asshole, but it’s because the rest of y’all are so friggin’ slow.
You should try the new BMW 318d. The prius feels positively fast and sporty in comparison.
On the other hand, the prius feels more comfy and has better fuel economy.
My 2013 Crown Athlete. And not just because it’s quick and sporty (well, about as sporty as a full-sized sedan can be).
But also because it feels so solid that I’m not scared of breaking it when I slam down the accelerator at the traffic light drag races or when I’m flipping through the gears in manual mode on the back-roads. I know it’ll take the abuse and, if something breaks, Toyota’s tendency to use the same parts across huge swathes of their cars means the parts will be cheap and easy to find.
By comparison, my old e90 330i was almost as quick and was lovely in the corners, but I mostly drove it at 7/10ths because I didn’t want something expensive to go bang. Having said that, the car ended up being pretty reliable, only non-consumables I had to replace were the water pump and the rocker cover gasket.
The first one was the Frog‑lamp Subaru WRX estate — a hideous-looking car, but I loved it. Back then I worked as a car journalist, so I had a new test car every other week, and nothing before or since made me drive like a lunatic the way that one did. Not even a Porsche. I climbed out of that car every time with my legs trembling from the fear of instant death, which never came because I was nowhere near the car’s limits. Still, it made me feel like I was the best driver who ever existed, so I routinely drove it at least double the speed limit and somehow always ended up on twisty roads for no good reason. People used to say it “drove like it was on rails,” but I never felt that with any other car — it was a surgical instrument of speed: point it at the apex and it gobbled the corner, no questions asked. I even tackled the crappiest roads just for the fun of it, because it took them with a calmness and speed I’d never experienced before.
Are you talking jerk or just aggressive? I ask because my driver’s license has never said anything other than Houston… either way, pretty much anything with a vacant passenger seat. However, unlike most of my neighbors I do occasionally signal lane changes.
The reminder was when I recently commanded a friend visiting from Portland who was dropping me off at work to perform the unsignaled, floored from the crosswalk, teeth of rush hour, far right lane of Smith five lanes over to the far left in the space of the intersection with Texas so we could make my office’s parking garage one block south. He complied, and was amazed that nobody flipped him off.
In major cities, use of turn signals for lane changes instantly gets you blocked/cut off. Can’t let the enemy know your plans.
Houston.
First time I got there at rush hour, traffic was bumper to bumper at 100 mph!
Nascar’s got nothing on Houston then.
My 124 Spider, and it’s my daily. Boost is addicting, and jerkifying.
I really want one of those.
Get one while you can. They are an aging, but still spectacular.
I have more cars than I know what to do with already 🙁
Any beater, but specifically an EV beater 🙂 Had an electric Renault Kwid in China for a while, it was one of the smallest things on the road but I bought it cheap and didn’t really care about the paint, ended up driving like a lunatic everywhere. 45hp seems pathetic, but when you floor it in a 900kg car with the instant torque of an EV it’s surprisingly peppy!
Sold on my wife’s focus SE for a ’24 GTI SE. Um…it makes me go full masshole. I’ve driven faster cars, but this thing makes me want to push it to Max traction ALL THE TIME!
Cars. CAR cars.
I legit got a body-on-frame SUV (GX 550) because it isn’t sporty whatsoever and I won’t do…illegal things. You get a ticket for going 120 and you don’t want to tempt yourself anymore.
Even when I had a 25 Mercedes-Benz CLA 250 AWD as a rental recently it was too much speed for me to drive legally. I don’t think that car accelerated to 0-60 in longer than 6 seconds for the week. And that’s in what is admittedly a sorority car.
Now when I drive something like a Sentra or Jetta it seems super fun to drive. And I look at CLAs with actual respeto now.
Any Porsche (though I have only personally driven a Boxster) and any non base BMW. I just can’t resist. The Boxster just feels so good when you drive it hard. And for some reason I can’t figure out how to use the turn signals in the BMW as I’m taking the on/off ramp at 75mph.
Funny, I find that the M235i I had previously caused me to be a much bigger menace than my Boxster does now.
Tough it was a very deliberate move on my part – the N55 was absolutely bored unless it was doing something antisocial, and the 8-speed auto didn’t help. But the 986’s 2.5L M96 has 205 horsepower, which lets me open up the throttle and be well into the part of the rev range where it makes fun noises before I start getting into trouble. The 5-speed manual also lets me distract myself with rev-matching and other routine techniques, and the soft top is noisy enough that 70mph feels like 70mph, obviously more so with the top down.
Redline remains a siren whose song I can’t resist, though. Just so happens that I get to hear that song at somewhat reasonable speeds now.
Any car I drove when I was in my 20’s.
(OK, maybe it wasn’t the cars.)
My current ride, a BMW M240, is by far the most powerful car I’ve ever owned. But the combined effects of age and marriage have made me pretty much a model citizen on the road. I’ll still take an on-ramp extra fast or pull hard when getting on the freeway from a dead stop, but I won’t do those things if I’m going to discomfit anyone else.
Most of my vehicles prior to having kids. ‘03 Golf, yup. Thought it was a rally car, drove in the snow at irresponsible speeds and had a blast. ‘69 C10, yup. Z/28 350 and 4.11 rear in a 2wd truck with no weight on the back…3rd gear burnouts were awesome. ‘79 C10, yup. Again, burnouts. By all accounts none of these vehicles were fast or particularly good-handling, but I drove the absolute crap out of them and probably scared plenty of folks on the road. Oopsies.
88 subaru gl-10. Bought it from a pay here dealer, and gave approx 0 f… about it.
Fun fact you could do crimes in front of cops and others would get yelled at. Learned that the “hard way”. Trying to drag some bikes.
Center lsd meant rwd burnout were possible despite 4wd being plastered on the side.
Sorry center open diff with locking. Not sure why my mind was on lsd.
I love reading about cars but my actual car life thus far has been a series of diesels and base-model Japanese sedans – my current Camry hybrid is easily the fastest car I’ve ever owned and it doesn’t exactly encourage spirited driving. Reading many of the comments, I feel a late-ish midlife crisis coming on….
For me it’s my 2012 Boss 302. So easy to break loose, do occasional burnouts, drive 10 over the freeway traffic. For me I guess it’s a combo of jerk, occasional stupidity, and practicing driving skills/having fun. Still, I try to be safe (situational awareness), and I have not received a moving violation in 14 years.