In order to understand the really disparate men in my life, I attempt to size them up employing their personal relationships with their automobiles.

My own father has ever been very outdoorsy, which suited him perfectly. He worked as a biologist, but is retired now. Pick up a fossil here; chip a rock there, that’s my pop. He never managed to grow any affection for machinery. He was raised by his parents to act like a gentleman, but engines and geartrains appeared to dredge up the worst in him. I have early memories of him blaspheming the Industrial Age as he was bent over an engine.

My father would always switch the tires on our Volkswagen camper, but I never saw him fawning over aftermarket center caps or grille work. While he would now and again dab some Rust-o-leum onto rusted points on the van or put H2O in the radiator, you would never see him take a Q-tip to the dashboard knobs or scrub the headlamps with a toothbrush.

My father-in-law, on the other hand, is a auto man all the way. He knows make, model and year of everything that’s in all likelihood ever travelled the Pennsylvania turnpike. Scouring whitewalls or ogling a 1962 Chevy at the Antique Car Club rally is his idea of a well-spent Afternoon.

He graduated rapidly from a pacifier to a pitchfork and pliers while growing up in a rural area of northern Pennsylvania. Learning all about animal husbandry and the ABCs of automobile mechanics was expected of young farm boys. His interest in things with gizmos, wheels, and motors seemed to stick even though any fondness for animals did not. He made the decision to leave the farm and go to university and he never looked back.

My husband is a teacher, just like his father and my father, but that is where their similarities finish. He doesn’t meticulously clean his cars, collect rocks, or go camping. He likes to spend Saturdays enjoy coffee at a local Starbuck, grading papers, and connecting with friends on Facebook.

He keeps his car full of gasoline, but would in all likelihood use his Chevy center caps as paperweights in his office rather than pimp his ride with them. No disrespect if you’re a center cap mind you. He makes the time to vacuum his car every other season and doesn’t mind driving around with the words “wash me” scrawled somewhere in the grime on his car.

My daughter’s boyfriend is a juiced up version of my father-in-law. (I think they would bond quickly if sent together on an errand to a car parts shop.) The Boyfriend got a aftermarket exhaust kit for Christmas and is content now that his car’s exhaust growls deeply, letting everyone know he has arrived. “I can hear him coming a mile away,” my daughter grins, evidently in the throes of young love.

There’s not question that the relationships that men have with their cars can be complicated. On occasion, the car can be a manifestation of a man’s masculinity, while other men act as if their vehicles were an enemy that are a nuisance to be conquered or at the very least, tolerated.

Some name their cars, and others blaspheme them. Some handle their vehicles with TLC, while others declare bragging rights because their car or truck is beat up or has the most mileage. Car stories are exchanged over beers, like war tales used to be told around a campfire.

Why else would the auto industry regularly sell billions of dollars in decals, auto alarms, hoods, exhausts, center caps, dashboard accoutrements, trick headlights, window tinting, backup sensors, seat covers, rims, and chrome?

Whether the wheels in the drive are fodder for cussing or cooing, I believe there’s some inescapable mechanical mojo going on - something akin to “If you build it, he will come.”