I’ve been watching a lot of Top Gear recently and it’s got me looking at the world in a different way…

I used to count the number of luxury cars vs the number of Priuses (Priui?) I saw on my way to work. Luxury cars defined as – Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, Lexus (for pretensions to luxury), Jaguar and any super cars I saw (and I saw a couple in one walk). The Prius won by a nose. Then I counted how many luxury cars (this time including the Prius and any other hybrid) vs trucks. The trucks won, barely.  If I tried to count the number of Subarus vs luxury makes, it would probably end in a similar result.

In Portland, if I counted the number of luxury cars vs the transients I saw…I think the luxury cars would win. By a lot.

I don’t know what to make of that. Perhaps it was a function of the neighborhoods I travelled through in there, perhaps it was a fluke of weather or a local event. In Ashland, the number seems to stay fairly constant (today I saw a beautifully restored muscle car – big fins and all).

Maybe the number of BMWs and Mercs on a city street is not a good measure of that city’s wealth. But the ratio of luxury cars to transients does seem to be a ratio of privilege.