Car Characters on the World Stage

The vehicle often holds an outsize place in a culture. A photography book’s dozens of examples are a collection of interpretations and extensions that reveal its moldability.

A new photography book on the car’s place in society shows the intimate role it plays in our day-to-day lives and even sometimes our identities.

Of course, the car occupies different places in different cultures, but it nevertheless tends to figure largely, and “Homo Mobilis” takes the reader on a tour of various post-transaction manifestations.

The 160 vehicles and their owners that Dutch photographer Martin Roemers chose for the book from across continents – some actually carts and other adapted contrivances – show how owners can make their rides traveling businesses, and not just taxis, or extensions of themselves.

A sizable number of the highlighted vehicles happen to be in India, where many owners exercise their creative and entrepreneurial spirits in the use of their conveyances. Depending on which ranking you consult, the subcontinent was either fourth or fifth in the world last year in automotive production volume.

China, meanwhile, was first and produced some 40% of new vehicles across the world, according to sell-side dealership transaction firm Kerrigan Advisors.

Still, many vehicle owners in those countries make do with well-worn four- or three-wheelers originally built long ago due to the same divide between the wealthy and the low-income that’s making new cars out of reach for many mass-market consumers in the U.S.

New or old, the vehicle can be much more than transportation, as the book reflects. One man in India, for instance, planted a green garden on the roof of his purple micro car as part of his environmental activism.

“Through this project, I want to hold up a mirror: to our systems, our aspirations, our transitions,” Roemers says. “We are what we drive – not in a consumerist sense, but in a cultural one.”

Auto dealers are of course an important link in the chain that connects automakers with auto consumers in order to maintain this strong connection, whether through a new car or a used one. What do cars mean to your dealership’s customers?