Octane Magazine

STEPHEN BAYLEY

Anthropologists – with their interest in tribal behaviour, totems and taboos – should be studying the car. On Octane’s 20th birthday, as a ritual celebration of our shared value system, I suggest that ‘what we do with a Porsche’ is at least as significant an anthropological study as the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, the symbolism of raw versus cooked, or the sexual conventions in Western society.

Inspiration here is a picture sent me by a friend, a wellmeaning gesture but one that has tormented, or vernacular costume: and, on the woman, a . She is cheerfully emerging from the Porsche’s sunroof with her partner, who wears (braces). They are addressing a jolly-looking fellow with pipe and hat who carries a conical basket (hod) on his back. This hod is full of grapes, some of which he offers the couple as if in an act of oblation (which, if this were church, would mean a solemn offering to God).

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