Artwork was produced that depicted automobiles by the basic outline and silhouettes formed when paint dripping occurs over the body, and by the colours associated with the automobile.

 

This was then turned into the experiment below.

THE EXPERIMENT
An experiment was arranged to see how famous certain automobiles are and whether they can be correctly identified from just the silhouettes, outlines, and associated colour.

 

THE LOCATION
The images were shown without any text or clues to random people in each of the following locations over a weekend:
·         Heston, London
·         Hyde Park, London (Near Dorchester Hotel)
·         Penrhyn Road, Kingston Upon Thames (Near Kingston University)
·         Middle Road, Harrow (Near John Lyon School)

The selection of these locations was based on trying to get a wide range of people. The places have the following makeup:

Heston is a typical working town (with a range of ethnicities) in London. The age of people questioned varied from 10 to 60+ year olds.

Hyde Park was chosen as it is an affluent area with a healthy tourist population and close by to The Dorchester Hotel. Many exotic and rare automobiles frequent this area so the understanding was people’s car knowledge would be greater.

Penrhyn Road is the location of Kingston University, where there is a diverse mix of people generally in the 18 to 40 year old range. There are also various car cultures present from stanced automobiles, race orientated, a classic car workshop, etc so people should be more aware of different automobiles.

Middle Road, Harrow is the location of John Lyon School, a private secondary school for boys (11 to 17 year olds). As most teenage boys are in to Top Gear, console games, websites such as Jalopnik, etc it was assumed this area would be most acute in automobile knowledge.

THE CONTROL CONDITIONS
To correctly identify the automobile people had to guess the manufacturer and the model name (model engine size, trim, etc were not necessary). This rule was created following a test run in another location where people would randomly answer Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Ford to images they do not know.

Some models which had different names in other countries were acceptable (such as Mazda MX5 vs. Mazda Miata or 240 Wagon vs. 240 Estate).

There were 16 images in total. Each image was shown 10 times at each location in a random order. This meant 160 totally random (and unprepared) people tried to guess the automobile at each location, meaning 640 people took part.

Least automobile savvy are people from Heston. The most perceptive people came from Hyde Park, followed by Middle Road and Penrhyn Road.

 

People from Heston trailed the other three groups by a big margin, the other three being tightly grouped.

 

Out of 160 people from Hyde Park there were 51.88% correct answers.

 

The most recognisable automobile was the Volkswagen Bus, which every person correctly identified. Second most recognisable was the Volkswagen Beetle.

 

People of Heston mainly recognised cars that were orientated towards families. This can be expected from the people living here, who are families with relatively modest to middle class living standards.

 

People of Hyde Park had the broadest range of automobile knowledge and were most able to identify older automobile. This can also be expected as people have travelled greater, been exposed to more automobiles, and were in an age group and financial status that enabled them to buy or be exposed to these automobiles.

 

People of Middle Road mostly identified supercars or recent automobiles. This could be attributed to children having short attention spans and being interested and wanting/knowing about the best.

 

People of Penrhyn Road were mostly into automobiles that could be bought by them, although were also attuned to automobiles they wish to have.

 

When people were questioned about their knowledge most people said it came from car related shows on the television and less from the internet.