From Diamonds to Dusty Cars

By Roy Nakano

California has a history of setting trends. Hot rods, Kustom cars, import tuners, Cars & Coffee, clean air regulations, skateboarding, gourmet food trucks, palimony. Get ready for another one: Dusty cars as a badge of honor. Who would have thought dust would share space as a status symbol alongside diamonds? Leave it to Californians to make that happen.

We first noticed it with a number of Nissan Leaf owners in the San Gabriel Valley. We also noticed it with an automotive journalist colleague’s own Fiat 500e. The common thread between both cars? They are pure electric vehicles. The 500e owner then clued us in: Since she never goes to a gas station, she never gets the car washed. And since her hometown of Monrovia (like many other towns in California) has restricted the practice of washing cars at home, her car gets dustier as the days go by.

And does that concern her? No. The grime-covered car is a way of showing she’s doing her part to save water. Just like driving a Prius in 2004 served as a billboard for environmental credentials, a dusty car in 2014 is a billboard for water conservation.

So the latest trend appears to be an outgrowth of the statewide drought. But unlike the aforementioned trends, this one may go away as soon as the drought does.

It is going away eventually, isn’t it?

Photograph by the author. The author is the executive editor of LA Car, based in Monrovia, California.