This was explained to me as being a car person vs a "car person" by a friend who mentioned what giant douchebags car people are, in a group chat with her best friends who are extreme car nerds.

I know it's getting into a sort of strawman/"No True Scotsman" realm, but I've definitely noticed it at a lot of car meets unfortunately. There are a lot of people who are very much attracted purely to the idea that "fast loud vroom car will make me attractive as a person", and those tend to be the assholes who buy a $100k sports car that they won't even take to a local autocross, and will use it solely to terrorize people in surrounding neighborhoods.

On the other hand, there are people who get excited seeing basically any interesting car. It doesn't matter if it's slow and cheap and isn't flashy, it's just a unique car and that should always be exciting to see.

My stepfather very much falls into the 1st category, and going to Woodward (absolutely massive car show/cruise in Detroit) was absolutely painful. He would shit on basically every car that went by, and on the rare occasion a flashy supercar drove by, would be like "I bet my car is just as fast". He's had multiple very nice sports cars, and I've invited him numerous times to autocross/track events, but he refuses it every time questioning why he'd want to. He'd much rather be an idiot doing 3x the speed limit on backroads than just take it to any one of the many nearby track events. Absolute numpty