By Heli Vaaranen
Frequently occurring, deadly accidents often involve aged “teen cars” such as a Ford Capri 1972 or a Toyota Corolla 1985. Teen cars are overloaded with passengers who drink and enjoy a joyride at high speed. Intoxicated males aged 1820 and with lower education dominate the accident statistics for young people, thus confirming the myth of Finnish working-class, car-oriented, fast-driving, drink-loving masculinity. Between 1998 and 2000, 75 percent of young people killed in road accidents in Finland were young men.
Speed and the desire to control
“We drive bloody fast, that’s the emotion we got! That’s the emotion there is throughout this country!” Tom, 24 years, shouted
an answer to my question about emotions and driving while recovering in his home from a severe speeding accident. Immersed
in car cultures, young men give in to an elementary desire in Finnish masculinity: the desire to control horsepower. The cultural
dream of mastering a machine can be found even in the ancient Finnish myths of Kalevala in which it was a great machine, the
“Sampo”, that brought wealth and prosperity to people. In Finland a father shows his fidelity to this cultural value when
he teaches his son to drive, often at the age of 6-8.
Controlling horse power on the streets is made into art at weekends. There are games and challenges: “Who gets there first?”
On Friday and Saturday nights young men worship the car and the engine. But this worship is social and it is embedded in camaraderie.
The cruising club boys’ nights on the town start with a set of favors that they do to each other. Once they have picked up
their friends, given rides, pulled cars out of ditches and helped their pals out at the garage, the fun starts. There are
challenges against other racers on the streets and against randomly selected drivers in traffic. There is speeding alone on
dirt roads at the outskirts of the city, and there is speeding in groups inside the city or on the way to another city. Nights
are spontaneous, creative and filled with laughter and excitement. Under the surface there is fear, destruction and mechanic
violence with threatening ways of driving. The boys get hyped up by the speed, the crowds and the race. They surround themselves
with noise and continuous action, wanting to forget that in daylight the sources of their pride seem very bleak indeed. In
an education-oriented nation, these are the lost boys.
But nevertheless, the car provides a great getaway. “Sometimes driving is better than sex”, a young driver Kallu says. "Both
women and cars cost you money, but the investment in a car won’t slip away from you. When you have a good looking car, many
more girls get interested in you. And the best looking girls…that’s how the guys think anyway”. A car makes a “real” man,
but to maintain that image, a real man needs the respect of other men. Engineering skills, creativity, humor and the willingness
to give a helping hand contribute to respect, while the lack of these will drive you out of a car club. At the club garage,
young racers struggle with their often impossible building projects on aged cars. They cultivate social and engineering skills
while building social networks for life. But when drivers test their cars, competition is fierce. Friendships and responsibilities
are forgotten. Winning a street race or a spontaneous speeding event in traffic is imperative to reputation management. The
gained reputation belongs to everybody at the club of the winner.
Car as a tool of sexual seduction
The boys love their cars that are referred to as a “she,” “the babe,” and “the whore”. The completed car becomes “a Madonna
in the kitchen and a hooker in bed”. Nothing else but a fast car can be this obedient and give the right kind of satisfaction.
The boys caress their cars at the garage and speak of them gently. In public they drive their cars violently. The engines
are tended to slowly, carefully, as if building a sacred cathedral. Yet the rest of the vehicle is decorated with stickers,
animal-skin-imitation seat covers and furniture spray paint. Some teen cars are held together with package tape. Further,
they are made erotically inviting with maximal music equipment, roaring engines and soft interiors.
The interiors regard red velvet linings, cushions, blackened rear windows and curtains. Some lads paint their cars “with the
colours of female sexual organs”, as they say; in shades of purple, red and violet. The cars work both as tools in sexual
seduction and as suites for late night lovemaking. The boys’ popularity among girls does not depend as much on the make and
decoration of cars (the younger the lad, the more inexpensive the car) as on their reputation as good drivers and bad, bad
boys. Sexually speaking a bad reputation pays off. Therefore, driving can never be taken lightly.
In these circles, being a good drinker is regarded culturally valuable, and an honest way of being a Finnish man. When spending
a night on the town, a boy carries with him a plastic bag filled with beer bottles. He empties these bottles in a couple of
hours and hopes that he will not pass out somewhere, drunk and defenseless. Within the Finnish drinking tradition, one does
not just start out to have a few for jollification and sometimes slip unintentionally into inebriety. Rather men, women and
young people set out to drink for a night or a few days in a row during weekends, holidays or trips. The experience is called
a “putki;” an experience of a timeless flow in a “tunnel” of intoxication that may last for days or weeks. In principle, the
cruising club boys try to avoid drinking and driving. This may be as much an economic as a moral choice, but even more so
it celebrates Finnish masculinity that despises weakness.
At night, young car enthusiasts possess the symbolic capital of being real men, superior to any other social strata of the
streets. But despite group solidarity and among friends, even these real men have to fight for their social order on the masculine
ladder. Who is the king of the streets? Which one is the craziest, the boldest and the most bad? The boys solve these questions
through driving. Risk and skill intertwine in honorable masculinity. If one loses honor, somebody else gains it and celebrates
it publicly.
Speeding girls
Having a steady girlfriend, a “babe” ready for a relationship, or a “loose chick,” i.e., an available young woman riding in
a car is regarded subordinate to the status of car ownership, yet almost equivalent to respect.
Although sex is an important motivation for cruising, most lads favor long term relationships. They are able to adjust to
monogamy, motivated not only by shared rent and warm meals, but also affection. There is tenderness in the boy’s voices when
they talk about their girlfriends’ driving.
Within this car culture, the position of a woman is traditional. Young women of the teen car scenes express timidity in their
clothes and make-up. When riding in cars, girlfriends are silent. If a young woman is very outspoken, she is probably not
dating anyone on the club, but a “loose chick,” on her own. Often these “loose chicks” attract attention by acting boyish
and by driving around with an attitude which often results in minor accidents.
Men are in control of the noise, music, movement, safety and atmosphere of the night. Women watch the cars with a hypnotized
gaze, desiring to be offered a ride. On the streets, young men display the domination they will
continue to possess in society and in family, even when it means the localized, domestic power of the working class male.
Many young women embrace an aggressive and possessive, sexy male who will make them satisfied and proud in front of other
girls.
Sexual affairs are an important motivation for the out-of-town cruises of the club. After breaking up with a girl, a new companion
is easy to find for a young driver with a car, status, and a cruising club membership. As the informant Nipe says, when he
cruises to another town to race, like to the town of Lahti 100 kilometres north of Helsinki (“a street-racer’s dream, no cops!”),
he gets to spend the night with a girl every time. Even the most competent boys respect a fellow who knows his way around
women.
Payback time
In Finland the media and the society define street racers by their lack of economic worth and future prospects. Indeed, respect is hard to gain for a man who is stigmatised, dangerous, economically ruined by speeding tickets at the age of 24, and if he lacks the executive look and education.
For such a young man, therefore, the weekend is the payback time. On the streets, the boys manifest their youth, desirability
and subcultural capital. This performance is a necessity, a must for them to save their sanity, since their class location,
age, occupational role and gender are constantly run over by dominant structures. At night, on the streets, the boys turn
society’s values upside down. They make economic security and education shameful and effeminate. They invest their bodies
in risk. If they come out alive, they have a legend to tell.
The youths use their cultural performance to survive the feeling of lost opportunities. They want to reproduce their culture
and to restore the pride taken from them by the police, by the social worker and by their parents. In their world what they
know best is appreciated: risk, craftsmanship, driving skill and disregard of education. These men’s relation to social expectations
defines their masculine identity as oppositional and therefore, honorable. Ironically, this identity is due to class solidarity
and it seals all exits out of this subculture.
The tragedy of the class solidarity is that it only accelerates the boys’ way to self-destruction. It promotes the speeding
crimes of passion, leaving behind death and injury; the human sacrifice of the modern age. As one informant says:
When you break a record, or get yourself a reputation driving out there, you’ve got a story to tell. That it was close, but you made it with minor injuries. Especially getting away from the cops will give you street credibility. That’s what it’s all about.
