Tag Archives: car

Superstition – Chinese

“When you buy a new car, you’re supposed to take a bottle and smash it against one of the tires of the car.”

“This is an Asian superstition, particularly Chinese but I have heard other Asian cultures do the same.  If you don’t crack the bottle on the tire than you inherit bad luck with the car.  Obviously the opposite goes if you do crack the bottle.  When I first got my license at 16, my dad handing me a bottle to smash on one of the tires and it was a thrilling moment because I remember seeing my parents do the same every time they got a new car.  My Japanese friend did the same thing when he got his first car, too.  I will pass down this tradition in my family, even if I don’t marry a girl with an Asian cultural background.”

This is one of many car superstitions that I have heard, but I have never heard a car superstition linked to a culture.  One example of another car superstition is throwing change on the ground of a new car.  The common theme behind both superstitions is making the pure and new, somewhat marked or tainted as old.  The crack of the bottle does not destroy the tires, but makes the tires no longer “brand new”.  Throwing change on the floor takes away the cleanliness of a brand new car as well.  My hypothesis behind the cultural tie to Chris’ superstition is that the Asian culture values toughness, both physically and mentality.  Possibly the breaking of a bottle on a tire marks two things: the car’s physical strength and the owner of the car’s mental strength to slightly damage a brand new, expensive vehicle.

Superstition – Persian, Armenian

To protect a car from bad luck, an egg is placed right in front of each tire of the vehicle. Then the owner drives the car forward, slowly crushing the eggs.

Mary learned this from her Persian-Armenian neighbors in Glendale. She said this is done when you buy a new car—almost like an initiation ceremony for the car. She said she is not sure exactly how this is supposed to work, although she thinks it may have something to do with “crushing evil.”

I am not sure how to go about analyzing this, but I thought it was an interesting piece as it combines a very ancient form of superstition—magical superstition, and a very modern object—the car. No doubt this tradition has started after the invention of cars, and after the wide distribution of cars among the Persian-Armenian communities. I thought there must be some older Persian custom that involves the crushing of eggs for good luck, but was not able to find any. At any rate, this tradition is concerned with an issue that concerns us all—motor safety. If Persian-Armenians had previously crushed eggs for some form of protection, it makes sense why they would try to adopt this to the car—we now, after all, spend much of our time in cars, and we are all aware of the dangers of the road.

As for the eggs, they have been symbolically important for so many cultures. Eggs seem to usually connote good rather than evil, so I am not too sure about Mary’s idea of symbolic crushing of evil. The wheels are like the ‘legs’ of the car, and are very important to the car’s reliability and maneuverability—perhaps, then, it is an attempt to instill some of the egg’s protective power into the very rubber of the wheels.