How Driving A Sports Car Impacts Testosterone Levels

A Canadian study found that men’s testosterone stayed high after driving a $150,000 Porsche but not after driving a beat-up Toyota Camry.

Quick Take

Researchers at Concordia University had 39 young men drive both a Porsche 911 Carrera and an old Toyota Camry, then tested their saliva for testosterone.
Testosterone stayed elevated after the Porsche drive but did not rise after the Camry drive, according to the original reporting.
The lead researcher later said drivers were told to obey speed limits, meaning engine power alone likely wasn’t the trigger.
Wider hormone research backs the bigger idea: status cues can move testosterone, though the effect depends heavily on context.

What The Original Experiment Actually Measured

The study came out of Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business. Researchers put 39 young men behind the wheel of a 2006 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet worth over $150,000, then had the same men drive a worn-out 1990 Toyota Camry with more than 186,000 miles on it. Each drive lasted about an hour, split between city streets and highway.

After each drive, the men gave saliva samples so researchers could check testosterone levels. The result made headlines fast: testosterone stayed high after the Porsche drive, but it did not rise after time in the Camry. One marketing professor summed it up bluntly, saying testosterone shot up “whether people watch or not”.

That detail mattered to researchers because it challenged a simple “showing off” explanation. If testosterone only rose when bystanders were watching, that would point to pure social display. Instead, the hormone response showed up with or without an audience, suggesting something deeper than just wanting to look impressive to strangers on the street.

Why The Speed Limit Detail Complicates The Story

Here’s where the story gets more interesting. Gad Saad, the researcher behind the study, later clarified an important detail in follow-up comments. Drivers were instructed to follow posted speed limits during the experiment. That means the roar of the engine or the thrill of high speed likely was not driving the hormone shift, since nobody was actually flooring it.

Saad said engine power “might have yielded an endocrinological response” but called that unlikely given how the experiment was actually run. That leaves status and perceived value as the more likely explanation. It wasn’t the car’s speed that moved the needle. It was what the car represented to the man behind the wheel.

Other analysis of the same data adds texture. One review noted that in the Camry, testosterone actually came out higher after city driving than highway driving, the opposite of what the researchers expected going in. A later summary said the team’s original theory, that the effect would only show up in a crowded, watching area, also turned out wrong. Testosterone rose in both busy and empty settings.

How This Fits The Bigger Picture On Status And Hormones

This single car experiment sits inside a much larger body of research on testosterone and social rank. Studies have shown that giving men a dose of testosterone increases their preference for status-signaling brands and products. Other work links testosterone to competitive drive, but only under certain conditions tied to stress hormones like cortisol.

Not every study agrees on how strong or consistent this link is. A broad review of competition research found that winning or losing a contest often had no measurable effect on testosterone at all, with nearly half of studies finding no significant difference between winners and losers. That’s a useful reality check against treating any single flashy finding as settled science.

The honest takeaway sits somewhere in the middle. A sports car did appear to keep testosterone elevated in this one study, and the effect showed up regardless of audience or speed. But the broader science says hormones respond to status and context in complicated, sometimes contradictory ways, not a simple switch flipped by horsepower alone.

For everyday guys eyeing a sports car, the science offers a fun data point, not a health prescription. Feeling more confident behind the wheel of something expensive isn’t imaginary. It may be measurable. Just don’t expect a test drive to substitute for sleep, diet, and exercise when it comes to actual hormone health.