If you’ve ever driven a high-performance vehicle – especially a flashy one – on public roads, you’ve probably had someone in a similar car rip past you at an unnecessarily high speed or overtly display their machine’s performance in a different way. It’s happened to me before. I used to think I know what it means, but these days, I’m not so sure.
I started noticing this behavior several years ago behind the wheel of various press cars. The first instance I remember took place in Austin, Texas. I was in a 2015 Ford Mustang GT waiting for the light ahead of me to turn from red to green. Before it did, someone in an older Mustang (maybe an S197?) absolutely blazed past me on the left. Perhaps he was in a hurry and didn’t even see my test car at all. Then there’s the possibility he drives like that all the time. Or maybe he was trying to deliver a message to a fellow Mustang driver.
The next time something like that happened, I began to think I was seeing a pattern. Once again, I was at a red light – this time in a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. Ahead and to the right of me on a perpendicular street was someone in a Cadillac CTS-V coupe. As soon as they were able to turn right, they rounded the corner, stomped on the gas, and left me and the rest of the drivers around me in the sonic wake of their supercharged 6.2-liter V8.
Back then, I saw these outbursts as deliberately aggressive. I was convinced those people had seen the Mustang GT and the Challenger Hellcat and felt compelled to let whoever was behind the wheel know that they weren’t to be messed with.
The older I get, the more I realize I should give people more credit. Maybe I read those situations the wrong way. There are positive potential motivations behind them. It’s human nature to feel a sense of comfort around people like us, even if we don’t know them at all. Couple that with the passion that every gearhead seems to have and it starts to make sense that a person in a Mustang would be excited to say “hello” to someone in another Mustang. In the first scenario I described, perhaps rocketing past me was the other Mustang driver’s impromptu (and awkward) way of saying a fellow enthusiast was nearby. I know there have been several times I was trying to be friendly with someone and completely bungled the delivery.
Going by brand or model might be too limiting, though. There are many car guys and gals who just like automobiles in general and don’t discriminate based on the marque or vehicle type. It’s possible the person who floored it in the CTS-V was excited by the presence of another monstrously powerful V8-powered American car and let that energy out through his right foot. For a long time, I thought I was witnessing antisocial behavior. Now, I think it’s entirely possible I was seeing reminders that nobody is alone in their love of performance cars.
What do you think? Have you done a fly-by before? What were you trying to say when you did that? Let me know in the comments section below.
Source: www.classiccars.com