As Alfred Gell recognised (read here the accompanying extract from his book Art and Agency [1998] at the back of the display case), there is nothing unusual about people treating their cars as if they were persons. In his terms, this ‘vehicular animism’ is just one example of attributing agency to objects more generally.
In modernist societies, most animistic behaviour is not quite respectable, above all when practised by one quintessential modernist (a white, middle-class, middle-aged man) on another (a car).
In Fawlty Towers, the BBC TV comedy series starring John Cleese as incompetent hotel manager Basil Fawlty, one episode has become famous for a scene in which, after it ‘dies on him’, Basil thrashes his car with a tree-branch.