None of the Beach Boys' famous car songs better encapsulate the feelings that lie beneath the American car culture than 409. The song, full of driving electric-guitar melody lines and equally driving drum beats, shows us, in a musical and lyrical way, both the hard-driving energy and the industrial poetry that keeps the hot-rod fringe alive, even to this day. While the melody is rich, the true strength of this song lies in the lyrics. The song begins with one line , repeated over and over, sung so passionately that one might even think that the singer could be singing about his girlfriend: "She's real fine, my 409." Immediately after, the singer begins telling us about how hard he's worked to gain his beloved set of wheels: "I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes..." After a rousing chorus, the song then continues by lovingly and painstakingly detailing the machine, detailing the car's vital statistics in a craftsmanlike-yet-poetic way: "...my four-speed, dual-quad, positraction 409..." A major indicator of Brian Wilson and Mike Love's songwriting skills is the fact that the two capture the essence of the hot-rod culture so well without ever being part of the culture (the same was true of the surf culture; in fact, the only Beach Boy who had ever gone surfing was Dennis Wilson. But I digress). However, Brian and Mike's skill as composers outweigh their lack of firsthand knowledge regarding the subject; if there was anything that Brian Wilson knew about, it was passion, and he poured plenty of it into this tune.