As a journalist covering the auto industry, I am often asked by friends and associates for advice on what car to buy. My responses convince me that I would never be a good car salesperson.

Apart from the fact that there are so many car models, prices and features to compare, the answer to “which car should I buy” is so subjective.

Vehicles are no longer just wheels to get around. They are also identity badges that define the tastes and status of buyers. All too often, they reflect personalities more than common sense.

I got to thinking about all this when I was in the market for my first car. So I canvassed family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances with an informal survey.

My ad hoc survey always started with a simple question: “What do you think of my favorite choices — Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf and Mazda Axela?”

Respondents were only too eager to share their opinions with me. The mere mention of a brand name or even a country of origin would be enough to evoke often-stereotypical attitudes.

American cars are viewed as strongly built but gas-guzzling. German models are considered well-engineered, but with unusually high engine oil consumption. Japanese vehicles are deemed comfortable and fuel-efficient, but with weak bodies.

As brands go, the Ford is cost-effective, fierce and rugged. Volkswagen is reliable, exquisite and expensive. Mazda? Well, most people I talked to hadn’t quite figured that brand out yet. One person said Mazda is “a small brand made by a community factory.”

Whenever I encountered a self-assured respondent, I pushed for further insights. “Have you driven or seen the cars in question? What’s your impression? ” I asked them.

Only then did most of the people I talked to suddenly stop and seem at a loss for words. It was pretty obvious that many people don’t really know what they are talking about when it comes to cars.

Some would argue that stereotypes contain some element of truth. I agree. But the degree of confidence people seem to have in cars before even test driving them persistently amazed me. It reminded me of an online mystery called the “keyboard car king.”

At online car-user forums, these are self-described experts who give the impression that they know everything about every car, despite suspicions that they don’t own a car or even have a driver’s license. Still, these “car kings” magically thrive by spouting mainstream opinions that simply validate what people are already thinking.

‘Face consumption’

China’s “face consumption” culture still dominates car buying. People are swayed by what they perceive to be a car’s social recognition in defining status, wealth, personality and sophistication.

The reputation of a car brand becomes less relevant than its image.

Volkswagen is proof of that. Drawing on its more than 30 years of strong inroads in China, the brand has become synonymous with safety and convenience, despite two massive recalls related to quality issues.

“If there were a new brand delivering a quality product, a decent look just like Volkswagens and a cheaper price, would you consider buying it?” my informal survey asked. “What about Qoros?”

The resounding “no” that I got seems to be an ominous sign for Qoros, a seven-year-old joint venture between Chery and Israel Corp, which prefers to let products speak for themselves.”

“You just spent thirty minutes telling me how great Qoros is,” one friend said. “But I would not like to go through all that trouble explaining to everyone else about the brand. What I think about a car is important, and how others see me with the car is equally important.”

Respondents to my survey included my parents, who are hardcore Volkswagen fans. They were trying to convince me to buy a Volkswagen Golf. I questioned their unconditional support for the brand after the DSG and Sagitar quality scandals in China.

It’s a matter of familiarity. In the early 1990s, Volkswagen churned out China’s first joint-venture sedan in Shanghai, the Santana. It was a trustworthy, popular car model and still dominates the city’s taxi fleet as a testament to its durability.

TV commercials run by Volkswagen in China rarely highlight product specifications these years. The one for Golf, for example, features people dancing and singing around the car until a “Das Auto” slogan ends the ad. It seems emotional resonance as a selling point is enough for Volkswagen.

For people of my age, it all seems a bit irrelevant. My generation grew up learning car culture from Japanese comics like Initial D and from American movies like “Transformers” and the “Fast and the Furious” series.

Back in my teenage years, I worshiped the car as a symbol of personal freedom and can-do spirit. With a car, I could go anywhere myself. I could not stop thinking about all those scintillating adventures awaiting me in the driver’s seat.

Since getting a driver’s license, I have been driving borrowed cars. In October, I decided to buy my own and began the search. I found old passions rekindled. I saw that “fire” in a red Mazda Axela — love at first sight.

At that moment, old memories about Mazda flooded back. The legendary RX-7 sports cars starring in the Initial D comic, the brand’s dedication to technologies, even a path less-travelled like the Wenkel engine, and all those ups and downs the car brand experience in China as an underdog.

‘Very you’

“This car is very you,” was the comment my friends most frequently expressed when I mentioned three possible choices for my first car.

“I get the feeling you will go for something different.” said one of them.

In my eyes, the Mazda Axela is the opposite of the Volkswagen Golf. The Axela looks “hot” with its enchanting red finish and sexy proportions, while the Golf strikes me cool and reliable, but a little dull. Like other Volkswagens, the Golf bears the brand’s iconic family look, a subconscious message of quality stability that runs the risk of making the family members look like a set of Russian dolls.

I could not get over my hilarious discovery that the Golf, when shown in picture, was often mistaken by my friends for the Polo, a Volkswagen model positioned one slot below the Golf.

No matter how irrational it was for me to let such a trivial factor play a big role in my car choice, I decided to follow my heart. I am probably not alone in that.

According to a survey by the China National Customer Committee last year, the decisive factors in vehicle purchases — ranked from high to low — are attractiveness, reliability, brand reputation, safety, performance and comfort.

Few buyers bother to check out the inside of a car if its outward appearance is not appealing enough. That’s one big reason why domestic brands, with their less fancy designs, are such wallflowers in big cities like Shanghai, where there is no shortage of sleeker competition.

It’s deceptive letting emotions overtake rational thinking.

I test drove my three car choices — the Ford Focus, the Volkswagen Golf and the Mazda Axela — and then pored through pages of technology analysis on each of the brands.

The Mazda emerged as agile and powerful, but my contention that the Axela, as a Japanese car, would be as safe as many German and American competitors rankled some of my survey respondents and was disputed online by “keyboard car kings.”

They all argued that the Japanese are less generous about using steel, resulting in weaker car bodies.

“You can tell that by simply banging the door and hearing how heavy it sounds,” said one friend.

I silently dismissed that argument. A car’s safety, in fact, doesn’t equate to its material weight. To be sure, aluminum is a lighter weight material, but it is now used widely in fancy sports cars because of its high strength.

I once visited the acoustics lab of a carmaker. There I learned that experts worked not only on keeping cabin noise at a minimum but also in “tuning” how door-closing sounds. Our feelings are more easily manipulated than we think.

One trick Volkswagen has cleverly used to maintain its legend for high quality in China is its fine execution. Its car exteriors give the impression of flawless and premium quality. On the other hand, Japanese brands suffered from the urban legend of cars as fragile as paper. Their structural design philosophy puts a lot of focus on “energy-absorbing,” which means keeping the passenger cabin intact in a car crash by making other things expandable.

To the surprise of many, the first car I scratched from my three choices was the Ford Focus. I concluded that this model, with all generations of its variants taken into consideration, ranked too low in terms of passenger survival rates in car accidents at its home, North America. When it comes to the safety issue, I trust numbers more than reputation or intuition.

Axela was one of the top scorers in the crash test run last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a US-based global authority on vehicle safety, alongside the European New Car Assessment Program. Volkswagen Golf also fared well in many safety tests.

I still felt uneasy.

“Japanese cars are soft,” one friend said. “How can they stand up to all the rough ones on the road?”

Whenever I got that response, I joked that perhaps I should buy a tank to live in this self-preservation society.

I doubt whether many people really understand how a “safer” car withstands an accident. Ideally, it should involve no “pillar twist” to ensure that the doors can be opened for rescue, a proper deployment of airbags and limited intrusion of the dashboard.

All these mechanisms would be meaningless without the key lifesaver, the safety belt. Many of my friends refuse to use them, saying they feel like “bondage.” I was surprised one day to be riding shotgun with a friend who had bought one of those popular devices that can be inserted into the seatbelt coupler to turn off the “unfastened” alarm without requiring the rider to buckle up.

Throughout my entire car-shopping journey, no salesmen ever made any reference to crash test results to sell “safety” to me. Their approach was always to ask me to “feel” the car.

I never mocked their sales pitches. I know how obsessed Chinese consumers are about looks. Savvy carmakers in China exploit that preference.

The best way to make a car look worth the money is to add things the eyes can easily see — all those value-added functions that lengthen the specification tables. What’s out of sight is generally out of mind.

After accompanying me on several car dealerships tours, my parents concluded that it all comes down to three factors: the engine, the gearbox and the chassis.

But whenever we got down to a specific car, they were immediately drawn to another three focuses — color, the room in the back seat and the panorama sunroof. The importance of color is universal, while the relevance of the other two is more China-specific.

A craving for spacious legroom, especially in the back seat, reflects the fact that a car is often bought in China to haul an entire family of several generations around.

The almost manic love for sunroofs is a bit more puzzling to me, especially after I discovered that few car owners ever seem to actually open them.

“Why bother?” I asked friends.

“Because it is a standard specification for cars above a certain price benchmark,” one friend explained. “I don't want to appear poor.”

“It’s romantic,” said another. “Seeing a patch of sky above my head makes me feel connected to the open air, just like driving a convertible.”

“It is good for air circulation,” said yet a third. “Especially when the in-vehicle air quality is not good. But sadly, the outside air is often no better.”

One thing was certain. Comparing specifications can be endless and equally useless if you don’t know what you are looking for.

Some of the specifications of the Axela indeed fell short of expectations. For example, it doesn’t have electrically adjusted seats, an almost standard feature on cars in the same price range, and the manufacturing execution level still has room for improvement.

Did I care? Not a whit. When I appraised the Axela, I saw its attractive lines, I experienced its smooth handling and I was seduced by its simple but elegant interior. The beauty of a car is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

I guess my own shopping experience helped me form the best answer to those seeking my advice on which car to buy. “Choose whatever you like.”

Just like picking a spouse, there’s no magic formula nor perfect choice. You fall in love and embrace what you like.

More than once, I was given a friendly heads-up about the Mazda’s low resale value. I just laughed it off.

“Who knows if I will ever sell it?” I replied.

The Axela was my first love and so I bought one — appropriately enough on Valentine’s Day.