In the USA, your profession often suggests what car to drive. Lawyers, doctors and real estate agents drive luxury cars to make a statement that they are successful. But if you are a software programmer, in general it ‘s not a good idea to drive a luxury car to work. Other people driving Toyota Corolla ‘s won ‘t say anything, but they won ‘t like it. Ten years ago I was working for a small company, and the owner, supposedly educated person, simply said, “All Lexus owners are assholes “. As simple as that.

Last year I was working with a very good programmer who was driving Mercedes S600 to work, which I think was wrong (he bought it used though). A guy driving S600 and coding in a cubicle looks as strange to me as these women in New York subways with Louis Vuitton bags purchased for $20 in China Town. Things have to match.

But currently I work for a client, where half of the parking lot consists of Mercedes cars driven by regular people like you and me. While Google offers their employees car wash on premises, these people enjoy discounted car prices, inexpensive short term leases, test drives of luxury cars for a couple of days. They work for a company called Mercedes Benz USA.

In the hall of the company you can often find the cars that you won ‘t see on the streets. For example, here ‘s me pretending to be a race car driver next to a sport model of MB McLaren. This upgraded model cost about $1M and has a reinforced 670 horse power engine and bald wheels. No cup holders of fancy leather inside.

While the original consumer ‘s model shown below has only 617 horses.

There is this popular Web site where former classmates register to find people they did not see for 20-30 years. They upload their photos. Often people pose next to a nice car or in a luxury Carribean hotel to show that they are doing good. There was a funny post on that Web site asking people to stop taking pictures by expensive cars cause it makes it harder to figure out the real financial status of the person. For simplicity, the poster suggested to post photos next to your yearly income tax return statement.

Since I can ‘t upload my photo with McLaren there, this blog is the only place where it belongs.