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When we were kids, our mothers used to tell us, "You are what you eat."

Of course, once we grew older, we learned the truth: You are what you drive.

Cars have become iconic representations of our personalities. Look at somebody's car, and you get an instant impression about whether that person is sensible or sexy, frugal or fashionable. (Of course, any psychologist well-versed in Freudian theory can talk at length about the connection between men and the size of their... engines!)

Of course, car styles have come and gone. In the '50s, "the wing" was the thing, and you weren't cool unless your car had them; a decade later, you couldn't even buy a car with wings. The surfboard culture of the '60s made stationwagons cool; a decade later, only suburban mothers were buying them.

Now we've got the latest automotive revolution: the hybrid.

Are they cool? Do they make their drivers cool?

To get the answer, you have to look beyond "the look."

Up until now, car styles have all been variations upon a theme. How they looked on the outside kept changing, but what's beneath the hood remained pretty much the same.

Hybrids represent the first real change to come from within the car, and that's pretty cool.

Do hybrids have style? So far, not much. But the fact that technology has advanced to the point where we can mass-produce affordable hybrids is cool. The fact that they cut down on the emissions that are destroying Earth's atmosphere is cool. And in these days of $4 and up gas prices, getting to spend your money on cooler things than gasoline is cool.

Many of Hollywood's biggest stars - people like Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Harrison Ford, and Tom Hanks, to name a few - have jumped on the hybrid bandwagon. And in our celebrity-obsessed culture, the mass acceptance of hybrids by "the A-List" offers up the ultimate endorsement of coolness.

So yes, hybrids are cool - and by extension, their owners are cool. For now, at least... until everyone's got one.

Once that happens, we'll revert back to the old paradigm of looking for "the look." I'm not saying we'll go back to our gas-guzzling ways, but there will be increased pressure on the auto makers to produce hybrids with the sense of style they've sacrificed in order to get these cars on the market.

Then, of course, only the "coolest" hybrids will be cool. Fashion sure can be fickle, can't it?

Learn more about this author, Jeff Axelrod.
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