Yes I can for the most part.
I can also recognize bicycle of friends that I ride with frequently. If I pull up to a coffee shop where cyclists hang out, I can often tell who is inside by the bikes parked out front.
I surmise that the OP must live in a town or small city, for co-workers to recognize a non-distinctive Toyota outside of work.
I use to be a car guy - lost most interest when I learned I can’t afford any ‘really good’ cars (same with scotch). We have 3 parking lots at work. I know who drives about a 3rd of the cars that park in the same lot as me because we arrive or leave about the same time and I see who gets in/out of which car multiple times.
I know my bosses car. He parks in a different lot, but I can see if he’s here when I pull in. I know 2 or three other peoples cars because they are un-common cars, or in one case, simply because the car really doesn’t match the personality of the driver (I saw them get into the car once).
The only cars I’d be able to ID outside of work are the race-type mustang and the little SUV with ALL the disney stickers - because they are unique.
I meet up with fellow motorcyclists for breakfast, coffee, etc. I can tell who’s there when I arrive by the bikes. And I immediately recognize if there’s a bike I haven’t seen before or in a long time. Someone got a new bike or there’s someone new.
This is THE biggest difference between me and my wife. We’ll be walking down the street, and she’ll say something like, “Oh, Chris must be having lunch nearby – there’s his car!,” and I’ll say, “What?? How do you have any idea what Chris’s car looks like?”
Sometimes it has practical consequences, like when she says, “Go drop this off at Susan’s house – it’s in so-and-so block – I can’t remember exactly which house, but you’ll recognize her car in the driveway,” and I’ll drive up and down the block a few times, recognizing nothing, then give up and have to call my wife and ask her to describe the car to me in detail.
Yes, that actually happened, about a month ago.
Of all the people I work with, I only recognize one person’s car, and that is solely because he gasses on about it all the time. I don’t understand car guys, but that’s another story.
Everyone recognizes my car. They always know if I am at the office before stepping in the building because of it. Kind of creeps me out.
I can recognize a few dozen cars of family and friends. Bumper stickers, roof racks, dents, license plates; there are lots of features to distinguish cars.
Wow, really? This isn’t Sherlock Holmes-level detection here.
If I meet someone once and I see what car they’re driving, I’ll remember it above all else, including their name and occupation. I can tell you which house every car on my street belongs to. I’ll often recognize familiar cars driving around town; my brain will tell me all the people I know who drive that car and I’ll look at the driver to see if it’s someone I know.
So, yeah, I recognize other peoples’ cars.
Got a whole crap-ton of gold-colored, nearly 20 year old cars round those parts, do ya? Four or five of them parking in the same lot, so you’d really have to look close to figure out whose car is whose? :dubious: Often, a thing is distinctive or not based on its relative frequency in a given setting, and I have to expect cars with that body styling in that color are rare overall and very rare in the setting of your work parking lot.
I can drive past the doctor’s parking lot at the hospital and tell at a glance if my husband is there or not. He drives a 2 year old blue Mustang, standard factory paint, no stickers or add-ons. There’s a lot of Mustangs that age on the road even in a small town like this, a fair few of them in that exact paint color. But nobody else who parks in that lot drives one. I can glance out the window and tell you that the white Lexus SUV that drove past is almost certainly my boss–there’s nothing to distinguish it from others of the same model, year, and color, but I don’t think anyone else in the neighborhood drives one.
I cannot, however, drive past my grandparents’ house and tell you whether my parents are there just by looking at the driveway. They have a big beige sedan about 5 years old–and so does pretty much everyone else in the family. That car could belong to Mom and Dad, or to one of my aunts, or to my brother… And forget about my finding Mom’s car in a parking lot without clicking the key fob.
I am a car person, but beyond that I live in a state that has county codes, four standard plate designs to choose from and about a zillion specialty plates. Even with my friends who drive non-distinctive beigemobiles, there’s so many combinations of cars, colors and plate types that I can usually figure it out from that. Although occasionally coincidences do happen and then I look like a crazy person when I roll down the window to say hello.
I’m as ignorant about cars as a 21st century person can be. Never driven one, and the only reason I recognize my friend’s car is by memorizing their license plates.
This kind of thing blows my mind. I had no idea people could do this.
My point was not that that specific make/year/color was so usual, but that the type of car I have is very normal - i.e. it’s not a converted minibus, or a Trabi, or a Delorean, or something that really gets people to take notice. It’s just a 4-door regular…car.
But then I’m not one of those people who can recognize makes and models, either. I’m always at a loss if someone says “Check out that Honda/Ford/Chevy/whatever.” It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve long known that other people could do that so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that to them my car isn’t just a “car” but a gold '97 Toyota. But somehow it still does surprise me.
I’m not a car guy, but I might notice a gold car. Your car wouldn’t be the gold '97 Toyota to me. It would just be the gold car.
It is to some of us.
I cannot pick out a car of the same make and model as my own, never mind the individual car. I’ve gotten into strangers’ cars and tried to start them (one of the many reasons I am thankful to be a middle-aged professional of primarily European descent).
Recognizing someone else’s car on the fly? More than beats Sherlock’s act.
That used to drive me nuts back when I was a full-time pedestrian. People inside of cars just don’t realize that it’s not all that easy to see into a car during daylight hours, due to the glare and reflections. Especially if the car is moving. Unless it was somebody I knew well, or had ridden in their car on more than one occasion, I just didn’t have any reason to pay attention to what kind of cars most people drove, so I’d hear somebody honk at me, and I could make out that somebody was waving, but had no idea who it was.
Yes, if I know you and have seen your car, I will recognize it forever. I also can tell what make and model of car it is without seeing badges (unless it’s some sort of esoteric antique). I have no idea why this information is so easy for me to recall, I like cars and driving but I don’t study the things. Amusingly, I’m terrible at facial recognition. That would probably be a more useful skill. 
I arrive at the office at 7:00, which is earlier than the bulk of people in the office, but there are still a fair number of cars there when I show up. I don’t recognize every single one of them, but considering most people park in the same spot every day (by habit, not by assignment), I ‘know’ most of them. I can’t necessarily match each car with its owner, but I know if one is ‘missing’, or if there’s an ‘extra’ car somewhere.
I’m not a car person, but I do tend to notice who goes with what car for people I know fairly well. Unless it’s a really distinctive brand (like a Beetle), I couldn’t tell you the make or model, but I would know to whom it belonged.
Hah! Several years ago my wife and I bought a Cutlass Ciera - even Consumer Reports called it the car “boring.” My dad always called it a “late-model sedan.”
Not unless you’re like my college friends, who drove a 1977 Chevy Impala. You can spot those from Mars. I can get it to a very general “green car, four doors, fairly recent, suction-cup Garfield in the window”, but that’s about it, unless you have a very distinctive car and I’m in it a lot.
Interestingly, though, I have enough pattern recognition for car styling that I can make a decent guess at the manufacturer before seeing the badge. Sometimes this breaks. I noticed one of these once on a local street. Gave me a brain cramp when I got to the front and saw that it was a Toyota. That’s pretty recent, though, and I’ve been intentionally paying attention.
Neither am I. But I can recognize the differences in body styling between a car that’s nearly 20 years old and one that’s fairly newish, and I notice differences in colors quite easily. I wouldn’t walk by your car and think “Oh, that’s a 97 Toyota X” but I would think “Oh, there’s that old gold sedan. You almost never see those any more.”
And that was my point–cars like yours aren’t exactly thick on the ground these days, so its relative rarity *makes *it distinctive.