Following years of watching people in Luxembourg drive, researchers from the University of Wiltz have concluded that those who have expensive cars generally look miserable, and those who have crappy cars generally look happy.
“It makes no sense, but if you look around, you’ll see it,” said Joris Audazio, who led the study. “You see a woman in a Porsche Cayenne, and she looks pissed off and constipated, while some dude in a junky 2002 Seat Leon with a missing side mirror smiles at everyone like he just smoked a joint.”
The researchers say they also approached drivers in parking lots and at service stations and asked them, “On a scale of one to 10, how happy are you?”
People in expensive cars almost always either ignored the researchers or gave them the middle finger and hissed like a giant monitor lizard. People in inexpensive cars, on the other hand, usually said something like, “Well, I’m alive, so I’d say eight or nine.”
Gui Fernando, who owns a new BMW 7 series, admits that he is miserable when he is driving his luxury car, but he insists that others are to blame.
“I chose this car so that the peasant folk in their old Fords and Citroens would always grant me the right of way, roll down their windows, and say things like ‘after you, my lord’ or ‘good sir, your vehicle is fine and I can see you are man of great means and impeccable taste,’” he said.
“Instead, they look at me like I’m just some middle-management office worker with a leased car that is costing me one-third of my salary,” he added. “Which I am, technically speaking.”
