Cargregores

 I read Dan Neil's columns because I love his writing not because I'm interested in cars. This week's review of the 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T: An Italian Stallion, Made for America (WSJ, 29 Jun 2023) has a lovely passage that suggests that car companies have distinct characters—evidence, perhaps, that they're ogregores.

Here's Dan:

What the R/T lacks in urbanized refinement—a lot, so so much—it makes up for with a racy disposition, deep braking, taut-and-toned suspension, darty steering (2.5 turns lock-to-lock) and, overall, a curiously edgy state of tune. Oh I get it: It’s Italian.

Year to year, I drive most new models on the U.S. market. I have observed that each of the sprawling multinationals that populate the new-car cosmos—VW Group, GM, Stellantis—has an ineffable thing, a constancy that transcends the branding. Call it the human factor. In the case of Stellantis—with products branded as Dodge, Alfa Romeo or Maserati—everything is tuned as if the product development people were nerveless 18-year-olds.

"Transcends the branding" means, I think, that it's deeper, more ingrained, and more inherent than a marque slapped on a hood.

It's an emergent property rather than an expression of employee character since the product development people who work for Stellantis are not, in fact, "nerveless 18-year-olds," even though their cars express the daring nonchalance of indestructible teens.