why are cars referred to as the opposite of your sex
 

jewels quotes this in the thread about the cars she's owned

"He's been good and kept us safe so far."

i then realised that i referred to my car as 'she'. she's been to to me, she goes hard, shes a nice drive etc etc...

so why do people give their cars sexes?

my rodeo however, i referred to as a male, because it was a pickup and it was all manly.

all the others are referred to as females. so why do we give cars human charaterictics and sexes?

It is a kind of fetishization. It happens with musical instruments and other mechanical objects as well.

My current car is a girl. Her name is "Baby."

My last car was a boy. His name was "Zippy."

Part of it for me is the difference between the two cars--Baby is a 940 Volvo wagon turbocharged mom mobile that I've been driving since I learned to drive, and Zippy was a boxy Volvo 240 also known as the "Gutless Wonder."

The only reason I refer to my car as a she is because the word car has a female gender in Russian. Otherwise it's it.

Heh, my mechanic answered this once:

"'Cuz they're bitches!"

Yeah, I don't have a car, but when I did I didn't give it a sex. I didn't ever refer to it like that.

My guitar, on the other hand, I constantly speak about as if it were my friend. It's a boy though....

I've never given any of my cars a gender. It's "it."

because it's usually guys who name their cars and car dudes usually aren't cool with the idea of being in another dude...

that's kind of a joke, but i think it's true that in our society most "men" are only expected to show affection towards women, not other men, lest we be considered "gay" so if you really love your car you think of it as a female

Given the degree of heartache and frustration my vehicles have put me through, there's no way it's a man.

Besides, the racecar seems to leak all over the driveway once a month.

Is it just me, or is that last quote HoF worthy?

My cars are always girls, my buddy has both male & female cars... but most of my friends just say it or the car or whatever http://blakespace.com/imgs/signature_tilted.jpg

I never really thought about it. One day I was driving home (6 hour trip) with a huge stuffed dog in the back seat. I decided I should give it a name, and I named it Levi, in that same moment I decided to name my car (because why not? Other people do it). And so my car become LeRoy. It's a 2004 Nissan Sentra - and I don't know enough about cars to say if that had anything to do with it.

Some of it might be that it's easier for me to think of/come up with male names, and if you have a male name it usually means you a male. But every now and again, I call him 'baby.'

I'm a guy. All of my cars are female. As a car guy its easier for me to sometimes objectify women and think of them as cars. Its a not a nice thing to do to women in general, but it can help me figure out some of the craziness of dating. The best rule I've found that applies to both cars and women is "fast, cheap, reliable; choose two".

Cuz it spends all my damned money for me.

I've never named a car, or even referred to one with a gender. I just can't pretend that my vehicle is alive.