Jalopnik asked its readers a simple question this week: what car would you drive to your 20th high school reunion? The answers revealed far more about car culture than any press event could.
The premise was straightforward enough. Pick a car, tell us why. But the comments section went sideways almost immediately, with a significant chunk of readers refusing to answer at all, instead announcing they’d never attend a reunion in the first place. Editor Erin Marquis didn’t let them off easy, noting their “inability to follow direction and complete assignments.”
The readers who actually played along delivered something genuinely interesting — a cross-section of what everyday enthusiasts think constitutes a statement car.
Two separate commenters named the Fiat 500 Abarth. Not a Ferrari. Not a Lamborghini. A buzzy little Italian hot hatch that Stellantis itself seems to have forgotten about. One was a rally car project. The other belonged to someone who skipped their 50th reunion entirely but wanted credit for having the right car anyway.
A 1996 Pontiac Trans Am WS6 made the list, driven to a 30th reunion by someone who claimed not to care what anyone thought — then immediately bragged about getting 28 mpg at 80-plus with the air conditioning running. That’s the kind of detail only a true car person drops. Nobody flexes fuel economy at a reunion unless they genuinely love the machine.
A 2008 Pontiac G8 GT showed up too, purchased new and driven to a reunion that same year. Pontiac loyalists are a specific breed, still carrying the torch for a brand General Motors killed 15 years ago. Two Pontiacs in one thread and zero Corvettes tells you something about where these readers’ hearts actually live.
Then there was the Singer 911 owner, who insisted the point wasn’t showing off but rather enjoying the ignorance of onlookers who mistook it for a garden-variety Porsche. Sure. You commission a six-figure restomod and haul it to your high school reunion for the quiet anonymity. Nobody’s buying that, but the desire to be recognized by a knowing few rather than the masses is the most car-enthusiast impulse imaginable.
One commenter offered “a submarine,” having spent their reunion underwater finishing a Naval career. Another suggested walking in Skechers because the venue was down the street. Someone pitched the Death Mobile from Animal House, complete with rented pirate costume.
A BMW M3 and Porsche 944S2 owner admitted they flew cross-country and showed up in a rental. The cars stayed in the garage on the West Coast while their owner attended the reunion in whatever Hertz handed over. Even that felt like a statement — the flex is knowing what’s parked at home, not proving it.
The thread’s real tension isn’t about cars at all. It’s about identity. Every answer was less about the vehicle and more about who the person wanted to be when they walked through those doors — or why they refused to walk through them.
The Abarth owners, the Pontiac diehards, the Singer snob, the submariner — each one picked a machine that said something specific about the distance between who they were at 18 and who they became.
Marquis landed on the Death Mobile as her favorite answer, and she’s right. It’s the only honest choice. Everyone else was performing, whether they admitted it or not. The guy in the pirate costume at least owned it.
What Jalopnik stumbled into here is a truth the auto industry spends billions trying to exploit: people don’t buy cars. They buy the version of themselves the car represents. A reunion just sharpens the mirror.
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