Buying a New Car: The Right Choice Can Get a Woman’s Motor Started

Posted on 20/05/09 8:31 PM by Amelia

It appears that those auto dealers have been right all along.

A new study reveals the car a man drives is critical to getting a second look from a member of the opposite sex. It must be noted that this is a UK study and well, we all know that those European’s are just a wee bit different.

But the results are unequivocal. What a fella’ drives really does matter.

Car Gets a Lady’s Motor Running

A team of university researchers showed a substantial number of women pictures of a male model. In one instance, the model was pictured in a silver Bentley Continental, a luxury car that would set a car buyer back more than a hundred grand.

In the second instance, he was pictured in a “battered Ford Fiesta.”

The 120 women, aged 21 to 40, were asked to rate the man’s attractiveness. In a sign that women rated the motor over the man, they selected the model when he was seated in the fancy Bentley.

One of the researchers, Dr. Michael Dunn of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, put it this way: women will rate a man higher if he happens to be driving a “fancy motor rather than in an old banger”.

Lady Gets the Male Motor Running

Dunn went on to repeat the experiment in reverse, picturing a female model in the Bentley and the Fiesta. For the male assessors, they were not inclined to select the women in one setting over the other.

Instead, the men proved more interested in the woman, specifically her face and figure. Status had no bearing on the views of the men, a fact that could prove very interesting as women become more independent and wealthy.

Dunn noted this in both instances, this was an evolutionary and not a social trait. He stated:

“There’s a wide variety of evidence that does suggest that females are more influenced by wealth and status. It’s not a recent phenomenon. It is very ingrained and the evidence is not just anecdotal.

“Females focus on questions of wealth and status because if the male possesses those, that male would be in a better condition to rear healthy offspring.”

On the flip side, those same evolutionary trends caused men to view women in terms of reproductive attractiveness. Wealth or status simply does not enter into the equation.

Next Study

Sorry ladies, but not only does Dunn suggest these basic human traits will not change in the future, most will interpret these results as evidence that women are shallower than men.

In an effort to take the idea one step further, Dunn plans to follow up with another status-type study to determine what happens when a middle-aged man chooses to purchase one of the more expensive cars. Specifically, Dunn would like to determine if the high-status car can actually overcome the current negative impact of age on attractiveness.

The question: can the right car overcome a receding hairline and a corresponding growing waistline.

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