Wondering about "the hate"

[Mike_Yi]

Last weekend I had my first encounter with "the hate". I ran to the post office to mail Christmas cards. I was in there for about 3 minutes. When I came out I noticed - and I'm not sure how I noticed with all the salt on the car - that somebody had graced the rear bumper with a nasty wad of phlegm. No big deal. Since it hadn't frozen yet, I cleaned it off as soon as I got home.

That got me thinking about "the hate" though. What do you guys think it is? I know it's all about jealousy, but why? IMO, the people who are haters are so because they see these cars as status symbols only. They don't realize that some of us don't care about them as a status symbol, we bought them because they are fun, have great performance for the $, and are well built.

My wife works with a person whom I think would be a hater if she wasn't as financially well off as she is. She drives a BMW. Her husband drives an Audi. When I was talking about buying a Porsche, I mentioned another guy who works for the company who owns one. Her response was something like, "That guy races his Porsche. What a poser." So she and her husband both drive performance cars, but think people who take a performance car to the track are posers. For her, it's all about status I think.