People say they love automobiles. But that’s like saying you love music: it doesn’t say anything. What you love is a stack of pleasures, and any one of them is enough to hook you on its own.
1. The Instinct
Before you search, before you even know what you want, something pulls you. A shape glimpsed in traffic. A sound at a red light. A photo you can’t scroll past.
Some people are drawn to Italian curves. Others to German precision. Some to a British roadster that will absolutely break down on you. None of it is rational, and none of it needs to be.
2. The Hunt
Now you’re looking. Classifieds, forums, that one guy on the internet who “knows what he has.” You learn to read between the lines of an ad. “Runs great” means it runs. “Patina” means rust.
The hunt is its own game.
3. The Bet
This is the collector’s edge. You spot a model before the market does. An air-cooled 911 in 2004. A Lancia Delta Integrale before Instagram discovered it. A manual BMW when everyone’s chasing automatics.
You put money where your instinct is. If you’re right, the automobile pays you back, in value and in the pleasure of having called it.
4. The Keys
The moment it’s yours. You sign, you transfer, you hold the keys. The first time you adjust the mirrors, the seat, the steering wheel, you’re not customizing. You’re nesting.
5. The Machine
Pop the hood. A flat-six that sounds like nothing else. A twin-cam head designed by someone who clearly loved their job. A gearbox that clicks cleanly into every gate.
You don’t need to be a mechanic to love this. You only need to have felt a good gearshift once.
6. The Spirit
Porsche is obsessive iteration, the same idea refined for sixty years. Alfa Romeo is passion that occasionally forgets to check the wiring. Lotus is the religion of lightness. Citroën is “what if we just… ignored convention entirely?”
7. The Drive
This is the obvious one, but it’s not simple. It’s the weight of the steering at low speed. The way the throttle responds: linear, progressive, or that turbo lag that makes you plan three seconds ahead. A brake pedal you can feel through the sole of your shoe. The suspension that reads the road to you like braille.
A great drive is a conversation with the road, and the automobile does the translating. Some hand you the road raw, every ripple and camber change. Others editorialize, sanding off the rough edges. The best ones make you a better driver than you are.
8. The Stage
Part of it is being seen. The head-turns. The kid who points. The guy at the gas station who says “nice ride” and means it. The parking lot where you pick the spot with the best backdrop without admitting that’s why you picked it.
Some of that is vanity, and that’s fine. A beautiful automobile makes a random Tuesday morning better for everyone who sees it.
9. The Ritual
Saturday afternoon. The bucket, the chamois, the slow circles on the hood. Checking the tire pressure even though you checked it last week. Wiping down the dashboard with a cloth that costs more than it should. Topping off fluids that don’t need topping off.
It’s how you stay close to the automobile between rides: the garage door open, the radio on, nowhere to be. Some people garden. You detail.
10. The Tribe
Then you find the others. The forum where people argue about the correct tire pressure for a track day. The Sunday morning meet where a guy in a €12,000 MX-5 parks next to a €120,000 Morgan and they talk for an hour. The WhatsApp group that lights up when someone spots a barn find.
Automobile people recognize automobile people, whatever they drive.
11. The Story
Every automobile becomes a story. The road trip where the alternator died in the middle of nowhere. The first time you took your kid for a ride. The afternoon you spent in the garage listening to the engine idle.
12. The Confirmation
Years pass. The model you bought was the unloved one. Now it’s sought-after. The critics who dismissed it have come around. The automobile that was “just” a daily driver is now a modern classic.
Or none of that happens, and you still smile every time you see it in the driveway. Either way, that first pull was right.
Not every enthusiast stacks all twelve layers. Some live for the hunt and lose interest once they buy. Some skip the bet entirely: they’ll trade value for miles. Some are all tribe, all story.
The more layers you feel, the deeper it goes. That’s why “I love automobiles” never quite covers it.
P.S. The Letting Go
It doesn’t belong in the stack. It comes after, sometimes years after.
You sell it. Maybe you need the money. Maybe you’ve found the next one. Maybe life moved on and the garage needs to become something else.
The ad goes up. Strangers come look at it. They ask questions you could answer for an hour. You keep it short, so you don’t sound obsessed and lose the sale. Then someone drives it away, and you stand in the empty space where it used to be.
The letting go isn’t a layer of pleasure. It’s the proof that the other layers were real.