100 Car Vocabulary Words Advanced English Vocabulary Lesson
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Can you talk about your car
in English? Let’s do it.
Today, you are going to learn a lot of car
vocabulary. We’ll talk about types of cars,
and also different parts of the car on the
outside and the inside. I am not a mechanic,
so these are all words that are known to normal
people in everyday conversation. These are not
specialized terms. If you have a car, and if
you need to explain different parts of your car
in English, this is the vocabulary lesson for you.
First, let’s talk about different types of cars.
This is a compact car. These are usually the
smallest kinds of cars. Then we have a sedan.
A sedan is a little bit bigger, and it has usually
four doors. This is a convertible or a convertible
car. The roof of a convertible car can open. This
is a hatchback. A hatchback has a special back
part that opens up. This allows you to carry
more stuff, and it can be convenient if you
often travel or carry large things like a dog
crate, it can be helpful to have a hatchback.
A pickup truck, or a pickup, or a truck. In a
lot of places around the world, most people in
daily life don’t have a pickup truck because
they don’t need to carry lots of things,
only if it’s needed maybe for your job, but in the
US it is very common for normal people who don’t
need this type of car for their job to just have
a pickup truck. Maybe they like to put their bike
in the back, maybe they like to put some gardening
supplies or anything, but it’s pretty common for
normal people, everyday
people to have a pickup truck.
This is a minivan. It’s what I have.
This is usually 100% only for families.
All of the marketing, all of the features are for
families who have kids, especially young kids,
but it’s helpful for any age of kids.
There’s a lot of space, the doors slide open,
as I’ll show you in just a little bit, so your kid
doesn’t open the door and hit someone else’s car.
There’s just a lot of good features for families.
This is an SUV. Those letters stand for
sports utility vehicle. A lot of people do not use
this for sports. All of the advertisements show
these big cars going off road into the mud and
doing some kind of adventure, but the majority
of people don’t do that with these kinds of cars.
They just like having a big car. It’s safer. I’ve
been thinking about this, because in the US, a
lot of people have big cars. I have a minivan.
This is a pretty big car. A lot of people
have SUV’s, and I think the reason for this
is they are generally safer, a bigger car is
safer, but when a lot of people have big cars,
everybody else needs to have a big car too.
I know in Europe, for example, small cars
like compact cars are really common, but
if 50% of people have a really big SUV,
well, your compact car probably would feel
really dangerous at that point. But because
so many people have small cars in Europe, small
cars are probably fine. This is just my theory
about why Americans have big cars. Maybe
they just like big things too, I don’t know,
but I think that for me, I like to have this
car because it is safe, it has a lot of space,
but also there are a lot of big cars on the
roads, so I want to be able to stay safe.
Talking about safety or lack of safety, this is
a sports car. Sports cars are known for going
fast just for fun. Maybe you drive your sports
car to work, but usually this is for fun. You
drive on some mountain roads, or you just drive
really fast on the highway, this is a sports car.
All right. Now that we’ve talked about the
types of cars, let’s get looking at my car
and take a look at all the different parts on
the outside, and then we’ll go onto the inside.
I just want to let you know it is incredibly sunny
today. I’m going to try my best to record this
for you. I’ve been trying to film this video for
three weeks, but it has snowed, it’s been rainy.
There was some kind of loud machine out here,
so I couldn’t record. And finally, it’s sunny,
but it’s really sunny. I hope that you’ll
be able to see this well and learn a lot.
As I said, I have a minivan for my family. There
is a hood, the hood of the car. This is a very
American term. We call this the hood. Inside the
hood is the engine and all of the other parts
that a mechanic might look at. There are also the
headlights here. There is a bumper on the front
and on the back. This is, if you get in to a
little accident, maybe you bump someone else’s car
with your bumper, then maybe your bumper will bend
a little bit. Sometimes we call this your fender,
or on the back, your fender. And those types
of small accidents are called fender benders.
So if you call your friend and say, “Oh, I
had a fender bender today,” it means that it
was just a small accident. You weren’t hurt, but
your car probably got a little damaged, and it’s
going to get fixed. This is the grill, the grill
in the front of the car. This is the tire. This
is the wheel or the rim of the tire, and these
little guys around here are called lug nuts.
If you go to the mechanic, they will ask you
for your lug nut key, and there is a specific
little piece to turn and open these lug nuts. It’s
specific to your car, because if everyone’s was
the same, then someone could steal your tire or
steal the rim of your tire. So the mechanic might
ask you for your lug nut key to get this off.
On the side of the car
is the gas tank. That’s where I fill
up the gas. On the back of the car is,
on my car, it is a hatch. Did you see how that
opened up? This is the cargo area of a car, or
for my car, it is called a hatch, but for sedans
like this, this is just called a trunk. In the US,
we call this a trunk, in the UK, I think they
call it the boot, which doesn’t really make sense
because boots should be tires, right? They’re
at the bottom of the car helping it to walk,
but now the boot is back here, I guess, in
the UK. In the US, we call this a trunk or
a hatch. You can also see my brake lights,
blinker lights. These blinkers will flash
when I turn the car, if I turn them on, which
you should, and back here is my license plate.
Before I drive, I need to use my remote, or some
people call this a fob to open my car. Some cars
don’t have this remote, especially if they’re
older cars and you can just open the door with
a key, a regular key. But my car has this
little remote, so I will push the button
and all the doors are now unlocked. If you would
also like to learn more vocabulary about daily
life, I recommend checking out my video, 120
kitchen items up here. You can learn about
different words to describe the kitchen.
All right. Let’s go inside the car.
I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. This is my
headrest. And beside me is the passenger seat.
I have a back row. In fact, I have three rows.
This is the first row. The second row is where
my children sit, and the third row, because
I have a minivan is where guests can sit,
or we can fold the chairs down and put things
back there. I have car seats in my back seat.
I have car seats because I have young children and
they keep my children safe. We can say that their
car seats are rear facing car seats. That means
that they are not looking at the front of the car,
they’re looking at the back of the car. That’s
because my children are still really small, but
when they get bigger, their seats will turn around
and we can call them front facing car seats.
Even though the word car seat sounds
very vague, it is always for a child.
Yes, this is a seat, but we do
not really call this a car seat
because a car seat is only for a child.
In some cars, you need to put the key
in the ignition, but my car does not have that.
I just have a button, and when I push the button,
the car turns on. This is the steering wheel,
the steering wheel. Behind the steering wheel
is the dashboard. Let’s take a look at that.
On the dashboard, we have here the speedometer,
speedometer, that tells you how fast you’re
going. Right now I’m just sitting in the car in
my driveway, so my speed is zero. You will notice
at the top that my car says MPH miles per hour.
Underneath that, there is some little tiny
numbers. Those are kilometers. In the US, it shows
miles per hour, but a lot of cars will show the
conversion. If you’re used to using kilometers,
usually there will be an option on the dashboard.
Other important features on the dashboard are
your fuel, mileage here. Well, this just shows
if you are F or E, full or empty. Right now you
can see I have a little notice that says low
fuel. That means I need to get some more gas.
Another feature you can see over here is C and H,
that is cold and hot. That will tell you if your
engine is too hot. If it is close to H, it is
overheating, and you will have some problems.
You need to stop immediately. But ideally, it
should be in the middle, not at C, not at H.
Beside the dashboard, we have the center console,
the center console. The main feature of this is
the shifter. My car is an automatic car. That
means that I do not need to think about gears.
I don’t need to think about first gear, second
gear, third gear. That is only for a manual car.
In the US, automatic cars like mine are the most
common, but there are still plenty of people who
have manual cars. In fact, when I was growing up,
my family had only manual cars, and that’s how I
learned how to drive. When people realize that
you have a manual car, usually they’re pretty
surprised, but this is the first automatic car
that I’ve owned, so that’s just the way it is.
Well, if you want to use the shifter,
that is how you will start driving.
It is right now in park. We need to go to reverse
to get out of my driveway, and then we need to go
down here to drive. All we have to do is pull
it down to reverse, and I’ll go backwards,
and then keep going down to go into drive,
which will take us forward. Beside the shifter
is the climate control. There is heat and
air conditioning, and you can change all
the different modes for that type of thing. Above
that, there is a little screen that will help with
audio, music, radio. You can even
use your phone through the screen.
My car is not the deluxe luxury version, so you
can’t watch videos on there, but that seems like
a really bad idea to me. If you’re driving, you
don’t want to have that kind of distraction.
There’s also vents. This is a vent that you can
use to direct the air towards you or away from
you. And of course, we can’t forget on the
steering wheel, the horn. If someone does
something that annoys you, honk the horn. Inside
the car, there is also a rear view mirror. This
will help you to see out the back when you’re
going backwards and as you’re turning. There are
also side mirrors to help you see beside you and
behind you when you’re turning and changing lanes.
If the sun is really bright like today, you can
put down your visor. Don’t look at yourself too
long in the mirror. Don’t forget to put on your
seatbelt. We can use two different verbs for this,
to put on your seatbelt or to buckle your
seatbelt. A common phrase is buckle up. So
when you get in the car and you want everyone else
in the car to put their seatbelt on, you can say,
all right, don’t forget to buckle up.
All right. Let’s talk about the pedals in a car.
There is the gas pedal, the brake
pedal, and in my car over here,
this is the emergency brake. When I want to
park, or if I’m on a hill and I need to park,
especially, I can push in the emergency brake.
Some people have an emergency break between
the front two seats. There can be different places
that the emergency brake is, but that’s where it
is for my car. Because my car is an automatic,
I don’t have a clutch, but here, if you have
a manual car, you have a clutch and you need to
push the clutch whenever you want to shift gears.
All right. When I am driving,
I look out the windshield,
windshield. That is the big window in the front of
my car. I also have windows on the side here. It’s
so clean, you can’t even see. It’s probably the
only clean part of my car, but I have windows here
that I can roll down. To roll down the window,
I need to push a button, and look at that.
Great. The windows work. They roll down. It’s a
little bit strange because you saw that I used
a button. I’m not actually rolling down the window
physically, but it’s because not too long ago,
in fact, the first car that I ever drove had
a crank, and you had to physically roll down
the windows. We still use that verb, to roll down
the windows, but nowadays, we just have a button.
I can’t believe that I forgot to talk about these
really important parts of a car, and that is your
windshield wipers. When it’s raining, you need
to turn on your windshield wipers so that you
can see out the windshield. It helps the rain
to go off of your windshield. You have a front
windshield wiper, probably two front windshield
wipers, and you might have a back windshield wiper
on the back of your car. Also, don’t forget your
turn signal. When you flip on your turn signal,
it makes your blinkers blink in the back of your
car so that people know if you’re turning left
or turning right. Don’t forget to turn on
your turn signal or turn on your blinkers.
And finally, even though I showed
you the headlights on my car,
there’s also another feature called your brights.
Your brights are an extra level of brightness
on your headlights so that you can see at night.
But when another car is driving the opposite way,
you need to make sure that you turn off
your brights. Notice that this is plural,
turn off your brights because you don’t want
to blind the other person. You want them to
be able to see where they’re going. So this is
useful when you’re driving in really dark places.
Before we leave, let’s talk about the final
category, which is caring for your car. Yes, it’s
important to know the different parts of your car,
but let’s talk about the different maintenance
things that might happen. When you’re running
low on gas, you need to go to a gas station.
That’s what we call in the US a gas station.
When there’s something wrong with your car,
you take it to a mechanic. Sometimes we just call
this the shop. My car is in the shop. Where’s your
car? It’s in the shop. Or I need to take my car
to the shop, and the shop in this context means
the mechanic. When your car is dirty, you can wash
it yourself or you can take it to a car wash. It’s
a very self-explanatory expression, a car wash.
As part of regular maintenance to your car, you
don’t need to go to a mechanic. You can check your
own oil. You can check the oil by opening the hood
and pulling out, we call it a dipstick. It looks
like this. You can pull out the dipstick. You
can also check the tire pressure with a pressure
gauge. Usually, your car, if it’s a somewhat newer
car will give you a warning on your dashboard if
there is low air in your tires, but maybe that
light or that warning is not working, so you’re
going to need to check it yourself to make sure
that you have enough pressure in your tires.
All right. Do you feel ready to talk about
your car in English? I hope that this lesson was
helpful for you. I hope the sun wasn’t too bright.
I want to know in the comments, can you
tell me about your car? Can you describe
some of the features of your car in the comments?
Let us know. Make sure that you read each other’s
comments to continue learning, and thank
you so much for learning English with me.
I’ll see you again next Friday for a new
lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.
Oh my gosh, all my neighbors are walking
around outside since it’s so beautiful today,
and I feel so embarrassed. Hey, how are you doing?
I don’t know if she saw that I was recording.
Maybe she thinks I’m talking to myself.
My neighbor’s trying to drag his trash so slowly
so that it’s not loud. I could never be a vlogger
who does this in public. It’s so embarrassing to
just be talking to a camera. I guess you get used
to it, but I would rather not do that. If you’re
worried about my video, don’t worry about it.
The next step is to download my free ebook, Five
Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker.
You’ll learn what you need to do
to speak confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons. Thanks so much. Bye.