"How Posh is your Car?"

WHAT CLASS IS YOUR CAR?
Still struggling? Try ­talking cars.
The English like to believe, and will often doggedly insist, that social-status considerations play no part in their choice of ­vehicle. But the truth is that car choice in England is mostly about class.
If you don’t mind causing offence, try saying: ‘I’d guess you probably drive a Ford Mondeo?’ to older members of the middle-middle or upper-middle classes and watch them recoil.
‘Mondeo Man’ was for many years the generic euphemism for a lower-middle-class, ­suburban-salesman type, so class-anxious middles and upper-middles will be highly miffed at being demoted to this social category.
The Mondeo-test can be a pretty good indicator of class-anxiety: the more huffy ­English people are about the suggestion that they drive one, the more insecure they are about their own position in the social hierarchy.
This isn’t a question of price. Cars driven by upper-middles are often considerably cheaper than the Mondeo, and the almost equally ridiculed Vauxhalls.
Those who regard themselves as being a class or two above Mondeo Man may well drive a small, cheap, second-hand Peugeot, Renault, VW or Fiat hatchback — but they’ll still feel smugly ­superior as Mondeo Man glides past in his bigger, faster, more ­comfortable car.
The Mondeo test is also said to say a lot about class anxiety
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The Mondeo test is also said to say a lot about class anxiety
Upper-middles who pass the Mondeo Test — those who are merely mildly amused by your ­suggestion that they drive a Mondeo — may have class anxieties about the Mercedes.
Try saying to a middle-middle or upper middle: ‘Let me guess . . . I’d say you probably drive a big Mercedes.’
If your subject looks hurt or annoyed or responds with a bit of barbed humour about ‘flashy rich trash’, you’ve hit the ­insecurity ­button. He’s clearly made it into the upper-middle ­intelligentsia, professional or ‘country’ set, and is anxious to ­distinguish himself from the despised middle-middle ­business class (or the nouveaux riches).
You may well find that his father (or even grandfather) was a petit-bourgeois middle-class businessman who sent his children to smart private schools, where they learnt to look down on petit-bourgeois middle-class businessmen.
Of course, most English people will tell you there’s no longer any Jane-Austenish stigma attached to being ‘in trade’. They’re mistaken.
Interestingly, the upper-middle chattering classes are the snootiest of all: most regard the Mercedes-driving classes with at least some degree of disfavour.
Again, the price of the car is not the issue, nor is the driver’s income. The class issue is all about the means by which one acquires one’s wealth — and how one chooses to display it.
A Mercedes-despising barrister or publisher, for instance, may well drive a top-of-the-range Audi, which costs about the same as a big Mercedes, but is regarded as more elegantly understated. (The Royal Family mostly drive Audis.)
Jaguars have also suffered a bit from a vulgar ‘trade’ connection, being associated with wealthy used-car dealers, slum-landlords, bookmakers and shady underworld characters. But Jaguars have also been the official cars of prime ministers and cabinet ministers, which — to some — lends them an air of respectability. Others, however, feel that this only confirms their ­inherent sleaziness.
What about SUVs? The upper classes and many upper-middles look down on them, particularly the ostentatious ones, which they regard as the height of vulgarity.
For the snooty higher classes, driving a Mercedes SUV would put you even lower down the social scale than a Mercedes saloon car — you’d be seen as a ‘chav with money’ rather than a rich bourgeois businessman.