“That’ll be those little Chinese fellas spying on us over there.”
The salty old Sea Dog just left that one hanging in the air – much like the pungent aroma of fish innards that constantly surrounded him – as he gestured towards the large boat drifting quietly past us. It was just the latest eyebrow-raiser in a fairly constant stream of casual, folksy racism since we boarded his vessel at some frankly ridiculous hour of the morning (for a freelance motoring journalist, at least).
He didn’t tell us his name (“Just call me Skipper”), but it didn’t really matter, as his weathered face and straight-forward dislike of almost everything told us all we needed to know about him. Besides, he was quickly dubbed “Raoul” anyway, simply because that seemed the funniest option.
So what, exactly, has a disagreeable old (well… maybe old? Quite honestly he could conceivable have been anywhere between 40 and 100…) seafarer got to do with cars, you may ask? Fair enough, after all, this IS supposedly a motoring column.
The assembled motoring press were heading out for a pleasant morning of fishing on Raoul’s 44-foot charter boat as part of a drive programme of the range of BMW’s SUVs.
Mercedes-Benz has been launching a lot of new SUVs recently – and having massive success with them too – so BMW clearly felt the need to remind the local motoring media that they too sell SUVs, and that fishing, apparently, is something that your typical Kiwi BMW SUV owner likes to do. So the idea was to give us that lifestyle/ownership experience, not, as you may think, give the BMW PR bloke an excuse for a company-funded fishing trip. No, not that at all.
Anyway, to my mind Raoul, with his weathered face, crumpled hat and earthy bigotry, represents the image struggle that high-end marques like BMW face in markets like New Zealand. And it is one that is not their fault in the slightest.
Imagine for a second you are an average BMW SUV buyer and that you do, in fact, enjoy a predilection for tricking fish into an untimely death, and maybe even own your very own boat to do it from.
You may well have a private berth in a fancy marina for your launch, with a secure parking space for your luxury SUV, but in New Zealand the odds are still pretty good that a Raoul will pull into the berth alongside you, stinking of fish guts with a loosely-packed rollie jammed in the corner of his mouth and a crumpled piece of tattered cloth that could only vaguely be described as a ‘hat’ jammed crookedly on his head, shouting a greeting that is somehow friendly, neighbourly, slightly abusive and deeply racist all at the same time.
He will regale you with a story of his day’s fishing, adding an amusing aside about how he kept a few “bloody kahawai” that he didn’t use for bait to give to the local [insert offensive epithet for a racial minority here] so that they won’t [insert illegal activity stereotypically attributed to said minority here] his boat.
In another part of the world, you may walk to the car park with your boat neighbour (or whatever they are called. I am sure there is a term for it) and they might say something like “Oh, is that the new BMW X5? It’s very nice, isn’t it?” as you climb into your car.
Something similar would happen here, except with a Raoul it would usually involve the phrase “Geez mate, that must’ve set you back a bit” as he expresses his admiration for your expensive luxury SUV in a way that is vaguely complimentary, largely offensive and, strangely, still somehow racist.
Raoul, as we called him, nicely represented the good old Kiwi bloke attitude toward a fancy European car without ever articulating it. The phrase “Typical bloody BMW driver” felt precariously poised behind his lips throughout the morning, like a coiled spring carefully held in place between something extraordinarily homophobic and something else rather unsurprisingly racist. Probably about Asians.
So why exactly do we have this attitude towards fancy European cars and their drivers? Is it because we are jealous of those who can afford them? Is it because on a deep cellular level we all have an egalitarian form of self-levelling suspension that likes to keep everyone at the same level? Is it because BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers really are all arrogant knobs who can’t drive properly and have no idea what an indicator actually is?
To be honest, I really have no idea, but I do know that I see it in my line of work all the time. Because – rather obviously – I drive all sorts of different cars all the time, you get to observe the general driving public’s reaction towards certain brands.
Try to get out of a side street onto a busy main road in something like a Kia or a Honda and it is generally a simple exercise, as someone will rather quickly let you out into the flow of traffic.
Try it in something French and they will still let you in, but will quickly become frustrated and impatient because your transmission can’t make up its mind about what gear it should be in.
Try it in a BMW or a Porsche, however, and it is a totally different story. You are left sitting there as car after car creeps slowly past in front of you, drivers steadfastly refusing to make eye contact lest they feel compelled to admit that you are indeed a normal human being and not, as they fully expected, Satan himself.
When you do finally come across a kindly soul who has taken pity on your predicament, it is usually always someone else driving a flash European car. Or someone who has owned one at some stage – you can tell them by the kind of shell-shocked look of recognition they give you, like they are suffering through an unpleasant flashback from a particularly harrowing experience or maybe a Michael Bay movie.
But here’s the catch – because everyone treats you like you are a pushy, arrogant, supposedly “typical” driver of one of these cars, then unless you are a startlingly patient and forgiving person, you actually have to start driving just like they expect you to, just to get through the day.
If you don’t force your way arrogantly into even the smallest space, you will likely end up causing the traffic flow to grind to a halt because you have died of old age trying to wait for one to open up on its own accord.
It really is a vicious circle, and one that would be ridiculously simple to break; we all just need to look past our stereotyped opinions of various cars and see the people behind the wheel. People just like you and me. People just like Raoul.
Except he’d almost certainly cut you off, show you a gnarled middle finger and call you a [insert obscene and graphically descriptive word here] great big [insert homophobic slur here] for driving a damn [insert racial slur against Germans here] car, you damn [insert shockingly offensive description of a highly illegal sex act that doesn’t seem physically possible here]!
A less potentially offensive version of this column first ran on www.stuff.co.nz!
