This chapter introduces additional social psychological insights into the understanding of the dynamic whereby cars and identities intersect within mono-and multi-ethnic spaces. Here, the car and what it signifies – who is likely to drive what, where and how – enables insider and collective group affiliation on the one hand, and moments of intergroup tension on the other. The car and roads further enable individuals to claim ownership, superiority and confidence, often channelled through emotions and behaviours that without the car would be deemed rude, uncivil, aggressive, or otherwise inappropriate and unwelcome. At the same time, cars can be places in which we can be and express ourselves: we can sing, laugh, shout, cry. On the flip side, a car can be a sanctuary of sorts in which we make moments of calm and quiet, helping us to switch off, relax, reflect and think:

Memories are made with people, but our lives are punctuated with the fleeting or recurring presence of toys, pictures and other things that seem to hold value and meaning beyond their utility or purpose. Alongside a capacity to elicit emotion, objects colour the stories we construct around particular events and moments. Donath, for example, anchors her mother's 1964 Ford Falcon with an identity of its own, and, perhaps more noticeably, what the car meant to her once she became its keeper:

Cars also function as provocations, with drivers experiencing or even enacting instances of road rage and anger-induced outbursts, some of which reveal insights beyond the merely interpersonal.