A confession: I can’t tell cars by model name.

If we’re walking through a parking lot and Annika tells me, “Hey, look at that Honda Acura!” I will be completely lost. The words Honda Acura give me very little information. Is it a big car? Is it a small car? Is it sleek and curvy or straight and boxy? Is it scary-looking? Is it unpretentious? I don’t know!

If we’re close enough that I can see the emblem on the grille, I may be able to make an educated guess. That logo looks like a stylised H, perhaps it could be a Honda? (I do not know car emblems and suspect I would embarrass myself prodigiously in a car emblems pub trivia round.) Otherwise, I will probably ask, “What colour is it?” or “What’s the licence plate?”

I am fortunate that my automobile ignorance is circumscribed—there are some cars that I do know. I can recognise the Volvo that I drive, although I only recently learned that its model name is S40. My parents have an older Honda Pilot and just picked up a Mercedes (of indeterminate model) from the dealership. When I rented a Toyota Corolla in the wake of my October incident I grew familiar with its contours, although the visceral recognition has faded.

Is it worth it for me to invest the effort to study car makes and models in order to be able to recognise them? I’m not sure. When I look up Volvo S40 on Google Images I see a lot of cars that do not look like my car. Volvo manufactured the S40 from 1995 to 2012, and my 2006 Volvo S40 probably looks different from the other Volvo S40s because they come from different years, their shapes morphing through each decade’s fashions. This does not give me a lot of trust that the ability to recognise cars by make and model will come easily.

I wonder how auto shop people do it.

Maybe if I just try to memorise the car manufacturer emblems, that might be enough for me? Honda has that stylised H, Audi has the four rings, Toyota has a T composed of two ovals. I can come up with mnemonics for the non-obvious ones. Then when Annika mentions a Honda Acura I can look around for the H and sort of just guess that the first H car I see is the one that she’s talking about?

But for now if Lyft notifies me with “Your driver is arriving in a blue Chevy Volt,” I will mentally replace that with “Your driver is arriving in a blue car.”