Unraveling the myth of Persians and BMWs

You might have spotted them. Dark eyed, with Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses, the hair overdosed with gel, one arm holding the wheel and the other leaning on the open window of their BMW. No, it’s not homeland security or a drugdealer, it’s a Persian!

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Not every Persian is like this. But why is this image such a persistent image? Prejudice is always based on a generalization of a certain character treat or action of a certain group. People mostly say it about ‘others’ to point out the other group’s weaknesses. In this article, we try to discover if there are any societal factors that influence this BMW driving behaviour. Let’s separate fact from fiction and dive into the myth of the Persian bling-bling car-driving macho man.

I am not just juggling with some prejudices; I am writing on the basis of first-hand experiences. Meet my boyfriend, a Persian-Canadian and a fervent BMW driver. The first time that I drove his car, he sat next to me like Darth Vader and almost got a nerve attack. His precious car, touched by his girlfriend! The sweat started to pour out of his over-gelled hair, and if eyes could kill, I was dead by now.

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Sorry, I let myself go again. But it was confirmed to me. Persian guys are crazy about their cars. But why?

Money

There is a very practical reason for the fact that emigrated Iranians drive ‘expensive’ cars in their new countries. Cars that are costly in Western countries, are even more costly in Iran. While you have lease-programs, month-by-month payments and credit cards in European and North-American countries, in Iran you often need to pay the full amount in cash! In the Iranian economy, the credit system is not used that much, and so people are forced to pay big amounts of cash money. And that is exactly why they cannot all buy such fancy cars. It is mostly only the rich guys there who drive the best cars. Of course, this is in a lesser form also the case in Europe or North-America, but in Iran there is a bigger gap between the rich and poor.

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For a lot of guys, such a car is something they can only dream of. This is exactly why expensive cars give such a high status: whatever you cannot get, becomes highly valuable. When these guys emigrate and suddenly can afford such a car, they will of course go for the nicest and best cars. And that is one of the reasons that Persians drive BMW’s. Keep in mind that I am talking about general trends and that this explanation of the ‘BMW phenomenon’ can never be applied to all individual cases.

There is another factor that plays a role in explaining why Persians drive bling-bling cars.

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Class and status traditionally still play a big role in Iranian society. There are different factors that make up the various Iranian classes: financial status, religion, kinship and educational status. Between these groups, people have varying ideas about division of labour, gender roles, societal laws and the role that the family plays.

In Iran, generally the gap between the ideologies of ‘modern’ people and the ‘traditional’ people is very big, which causes the different groups to hang on to their own ideologies more strictly; they emphasize their ‘modernity’ or ‘traditionalist’ outlook to define themselves in opposition from the other groups. (I put modern and traditional between quotation marks because there is no perfect modernity or traditionalist, they are both a mixture of modern and traditional components). This struggle over identity even happens on a smaller scale within kin-groups, in which the younger generation embraces a lifestyle of partying and drugs in rebellion to their parents, who abide to more traditional rules.

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Modern goods, like expensive cars and fashion, become items with which people can distinguish themselves from others. Especially in a society under religious rule, where the separation of the sexes is still prevalent and people must abide to strict societal rules, it is seen as rebellious by modern young Iranians to embrace a life of partying, fashion, layers of make-up and expensive houses and cars. The one extreme group influences the other group to become more extreme and vice versa.

Again this is not THE reason every Persian drives a good car. It is one of the many factors that play a role in explaining why some Persians think so highly of Western goods, among others cars.

Beauty

Persians love physical beauty. This is also one of the reasons why so many people replace their Persian nose for a subtler one. The better your nose is, the higher your physical attractiveness is, that's the general idea. The better the car is, the higher your status seems to fit into that mindset. However, I must say, just like all the other factors, this is not only applicable to Iran, we can see it in many places all over the world.

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I hope to have unraveled the myth a little bit more. There is much more to explain, and so I hope to complete the picture that you get from the Iranian society more and more in the next blog's posts.

To be continued...

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