Cars are fondly thought of as a reflection of American culture. We are a car culture. We eschew public transportation for wide sweeping swaths of asphalt. We love the open road. And in as much as our cars define us as a culture, our cars are getting fat – just like we are.

It’s tough to be sure whether or not this fat car syndrome is a reflection of our unquenchable appetites – bigger, faster, more luxurious – or whether it is a way to encompass and diminish our own personal hugeness. You don’t look quite so fucking fat stepping down out of your giant Dodge Ram pick-up (with it’s requisite “Hemi” – while its driver is likely more fully spherical). And you practically look like Audrey Hepburn disembarking from your Hummer or H2.

Even the once slender Japanese are becoming soft in their old age. Think about the original Accord, with it’s sharp defined profile. Now it’s two Ho-hos from ghetto booty. Nissan’s no better. Their Altima’s got an ass you can get both hands on. Using a trompe l’oeil device to hide your girth may seem like a stretch, but why not. Isn’t it possible that subconsciously we’re open to anything that makes us look smaller.

There is a certain amount of hope out there if we can define our appetites by the car we drive. You can find yourself in an Insight, delicately sipping gasoline as you almost invisibly move through the crowded highway. As a Mini driver, you’ve decided that smaller doesn’t have to mean scrawny. You work out, and aren’t going to take shit from anyone. Some of the old stand-bys are there too – the Civics and Sentras, still winning the battle of the bulge.

There’s a great Simpsons episode, one where the whole town participates in a series of vignettes, nearly the last of which has the bully Nelson giving a HA-ha to a very tall man driving a very small car. Nelson gets his.

There are clearly parallels with the vehicle choices we make and the lifestyles we live. Keep an eye out. If you see a fat guy get out of an Insight or Prius, let me know, because I haven’t seen many fat environmentalists.