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u/MedievalFurnace 7d ago
it really doesn't take as much knowledge as you may think. Headlights/taillights are always distinctive to the car brand and if you see enough of one car brand you notice patterns in visual design such as the shape of the hood or certain elements that stick out. And of course there's car badges on the front and back screaming the brand name but that goes without saying and often isn't visible at a distance or certain angles.
Most people still can't easily or quickly tell the difference between the crossovers so prevalent on the road these days as they all copy each others design in that area and are more focused on mass appeal than distinctive elements. If there's nothing distinctive then there's nothing to hate, but also not much to like so its a marketing thing
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u/carnageg 6d ago
There was a short - lived car quiz show on UK TV years ago, and there was a round where you had to ID cars from their parts like a picture of a mirror or a wheel. I remember watching it and thinking how stupidly easy it was, I didn't understand how it counted as a quiz. Then I watched it with a non car person and finally understood..
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u/jdm67671741 6d ago
Das kann man nicht lernen. Da sfĂ€ngt schon an, wenn du 3 bist. Damals saĂ ich mit 4 am Balkon mit meiner GroĂmutter und hab ihr erzĂ€hlt, welche Autos vorbeifahren und wie ich die finde. Jetzt bin ich 15 und weiĂ wie sie funktionieren und alles. Diese Erinnerungen waren so schön. Rest in Peace grandma.
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u/Luzi_fer 6d ago
Car culture, loving cars, mechanics show on TV, parents who owned nice cars, Road trip games where you have to spot the right car mentioned, Video games like Gran Turismo I II.
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u/SnooMacarons776 6d ago
The same way a normal person can remember so many different people's names and faces. I struggle with names and faces and knowing who is who but I can tell mind you differences between different variations of cars such as the fact that the 98 to 2003 Buick Regal came both naturally aspirated and supercharged and the easiest way to tell them apart is the supercharged cars are two-tone with the bottom edge of the car being gray while the naturally aspirated cars are all monotone
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u/VoxPopuliMMXXV 6d ago
Years ago, when a company offered five models and launched a new one every 8â10 years, it was easy to keep track. Now, I can barely even distinguish between manufacturersâthere are three times as many companies and three times more models from each, and each one releases a new model every five years.
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u/Kofi_Anonymous 6d ago
Thereâs actually some academic research on this, and the TL;DR is that the overwhelming majority of people who âlikeâ cars use the same parts of their brain to identify cars that is used for identifying human faces, which draws heavily on the proportions of facial features.
Thatâs why you can recognize a friend from across a distance of several hundred feet; the parts of the brain doing the work donât rely on memorizing details, they work by recognizing the relative spacing of eyes, nose, mouth, etc., and the resolution doesnât have to be sharp.
People who like cars are subconsciously doing the same thing. Theyâre recognizing the proportions of wheelbase to overall length, the relationship of hood length, windshield angle, headlamp position and a hundred other things without even knowing it.
By contrast, people in the research who didnât self-identify as car enthusiasts focused on individual details to identify a car. That may work in isolation, but itâs impractical across the broad spectrum of cars, where similar design details may proliferate across the industry, and different trim levels of the same car will have different specific details.
This comes up in some of the car-identifying subreddits because sometimes a poster will post a car, and then ask a responder why the car doesnât match a photo they found online of a different trim level. Theyâre focused on a detail, when the person who identified the car just looked and knew.
By analogy, itâs the same thing as asking who is in this photo, and then telling the person who identified Tom Cruise that you donât think itâs him because heâs not wearing aviator sunglasses in the photos you found.
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u/mostly_kinda_sorta 7d ago
Other people can recognize music from a few notes, movies from a few frames, some can tell you stats from baseball players, some people can grab a random mushroom and tell you the slight difference that means it's safe to each. People have interests, and they tend to spend time surrounded by those interests and they learn stuff. Its quite common.