No more drive in boys with their toys

On what made for 2022's last social media kickboxing row, former kickboxer and professional misogynist Andrew Tate and environmentnik Greta Thunberg's exchanges on Twitter made amusing reading. The hullabaloo started when Tate, arrested in Romania for human trafficking charges, taunted Thunberg's activism against fossil-fuelled cars by tweeting her to provide her email address so that he could 'send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions'. Thunberg's reply caught out Tate's alpha male posturing that celebrated 'bad boy' disdain for climate concerns and fetishisation of cars. But, in that fog of punch-counterpunch, one question does emerge of interest lasting into the new year: is celebrating flashy cars a guy thing?

Well, yes and no. Clearly, for more than a century since Henry Ford wheeled out the Model T in 1908, men have been specially targeted as boys with must-have toys. So, yes, decades of gender-based advertising has worked. But with the 'freedom' that an automobile represents going hand in hand with 'women's liberation', the car has taken a turn towards a less macho road. In that respect, Tate's 'Fast and the Furious' flexing of auto-mythology is actually quite 20th-century and outdated. And, indeed, uncool. As a corollary, car fumes are out - for men, women as well as the very childish.