‘Women Auto Know’ Revisited

Women’s Car Advice website A Girls Guide to Cars

A number of years ago I wrote a journal article – Women Auto Know: Automotive Knowledge, Auto Activism, and Women’s Online Car Advice – that focused on four popular online car advice sites for women. While, at the time, an online Google search revealed nearly one million car advice websites, only a very few were geared specifically for the woman driver. The women’s car advice websites I came upon did not function as forums or social networks but rather, were constructed as reputable and important resources for automotive knowledge and the acquisition of negotiation strategies and skills. In addition to providing advice and information, a few of the sites endeavored to revolutionize the male dominated automobile market to become more “woman-friendly” through an integrated auto dealership rating system. As I argued in the article, these online locations were significant not only for the hard facts they made accessible to female visitors, but for what women gained – as drivers, consumers, and political actors – by accessing them. 

Although we are now accustomed to finding just about anything on the Internet, at the time the original research was conducted – 2010 and again in 2013 – the idea that women could find online automotive information that addressed their specific needs, concerns, and experiences was rather new. The four online locations cited – AskPatty.com, Women-drivers.com, Road and Travel Magazine, and VroomGirls – could be considered revolutionary for the time. Nearly ten years since I first visited these online locations, these four car advice websites continue to provide useful information and negotiation skills to the woman behind the wheel.

While browsing women-and-car articles online a few days ago I came across a recent addition to the women’s car advice scene. As noted on the site, A Girls Guide to Cars was introduced in 2018 in an effort to provide women with a fun, fresh, and informative automotive source. Described as “Cars on Your Terms, and a Car Site for Women,” A Girls Guide to Cars provides many of the services of the older sites. It also shares a philosophy of not only providing information, tactics, and strategies to make a smart and comfortable automotive decisions, but to empower the auto industry to develop a better relationship with female customers. 

While it builds on the strengths of its online predecessors, A Girls Guide to Cars reflects a younger, more technologically savvy, and perhaps more economically stable population of women drivers. The regularly posted articles – which fall into categories of luxury, style, technology, travel, car buying, and news and opinion – are written by a diverse group of female staff and outside contributors from all over the US and Canada with various interests, occupations, and hobbies. They are authors, bloggers, podcasts, content creators, and journalists, whose common interest is a love and fascination for the automobile. As the contributors note, “we are not car enthusiasts, but regular women who spend time in cars, make car buying decisions, and think about how women are changing the automotive world.” There is a plethora of automotive information available on the site, as well as a good dose of automotive/human interest stories. All content is well-researched, well-written, and enjoyable to read, written from a definite female perspective.

Like the car advice sites that preceded it, A Girls Guide to Cars recognizes that when it comes to cars, women often have different needs, uses, and perspectives than the male driver. If you are a woman who is into cars, desires car buying information, or is just looking for a good automotive read, I suggest you take a look at A Girls Guide to Cars. 

Reiss, Scotty. A Girls Guide to Cars: Empowering Smarter, Happier Car Owners. agirlsguidetocars.net (2018).

Lezotte, Chris. “Women Auto Know: Automotive Knowledge, Auto Activism, and Women’s Online Car Advice.” Feminist Media Studies (2014): 1-17.

Have you ever visited an online car advice site? How was that experience? Do you have any that you would recommend? Your comments are welcome.

Truck Guys Aren’t Just Guys

Molly Osberg’s New-to-Her Toyota Tacoma

I recently came across an article on Jezebel – “A Supposedly Feminist Website” – about a recent pickup truck purchase of one of its writers. In “I’m a Truck Guy Now,” blogger Molly Osberg announces, discusses, and rationalizes her recent acquisition of a used Toyota Tacoma. Although Osberg’s excitement in her vehicle choice is palpable, she finds it necessary to continually justify not only the purchase itself, but her feelings about owning a mid-sized truck. It is only after she lays out the “legitimate” reasons for owning a truck that she allows herself to express why, in her words, the Tacoma is “the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever owned.”

Women and pickup trucks was the subject of an article adapted from my dissertation recently published in the European Journal of American Culture. In “A Woman and Her Truck: Pickups, the Woman Driver, and Cowgirl Feminism” I call upon a 2013 Chevy Silverado commercial as a segue into American women’s growing fascination with pickups. In interviews with 25 truck-owning women, I consider how women often assume cowgirl personas as a way to gain legitimacy in a historically masculine culture. However, what also became apparent through these enlightening conversations was how passionately many women feel about driving and owning a pickup truck.

Osberg shares many of the sentiments of those interviewed for “A Woman and Her Truck”. Much like those female truck owners, Osberg expounds upon the vehicle’s practical applications to her own life and that of her partner. Whether calling upon the truck to pull horse trailers and boats, or transport landscape supplies and building materials, women are likely to view truck ownership as a way to present themselves as tough, sturdy, industrious, and hardworking. Osberg also spends a great amount of time considering possible modifications to the truck. Carhartt seat covers, a trailer hitch, a three-inch lift, a truck cap, and vinyl racing stripes are a few of the additions Osberg contemplates as a way to make the truck her own. Osberg has named her pickup “Wylene”. In many of my women-and-car projects, I have found that naming is a common way women personalize and create identities for the vehicles they drive. Osberg also enjoys the element of surprise driving a pickup offers. Due to the truck’s size, substance, and strong association with masculinity, a small woman climbing out of a big truck often turns heads. And as Osberg has discovered, trucks provide the female motorist a sense of respect not often awarded to a driver of a typical “mom” vehicle – i.e. minivan or small SUV. As noted by the 25 truck-owning women, the ability to confidently and expertly handle a vehicle of considerable size and power marks the woman behind the wheel as an exceptional driver.

However, unlike Osberg, the women I interviewed had few qualms expressing enthusiasm, passion, and pure joy over the trucks they drive. They love how they feel when behind the wheel of a large, powerful vehicle. They appreciate the opportunities for recreation and adventure the pickup makes possible. They embrace the respect they receive when maneuvering a cumbersome machine; they feel empowered by the strength and toughness associated with truck ownership; they consider themselves exceptional for handling a vehicle rarely associated with the female motorist.

Perhaps Osberg’s reticence regarding her recent automotive purchase stems from an underlying suspicion that she does not in fact need, or deserve, a pickup truck. Perhaps admitting her affection for a masculine material object on a “supposedly feminist website” causes her to question her feminist “props.” However, as the interviews with 25 unapologetic truck-owning women – not to mention the growing number of female truck consumers – make clear, a good number of women have discovered that pickup ownership enhances their work, play, lives, and self-worth. As they might say to Molly Osberg, perhaps it is time to shed your inhibitions and take a little bit of joy from your new-to-you Toyota Tacoma.

Lezotte, Chris. “A Woman and Her Truck: Pickups, the Woman Driver, and Cowgirl Feminism.” European Journal of American Culture 38.2 (2019): 135-153.

Osberg, Molly. “I’m a Truck Guy Now.” Jezebel.com 6 December 2019.

Are you a truck owner? If not, have you ever considered purchasing one? What pickup qualities most interest you? Feel free to comment below.

Designing Women

Harvey Earle and the General Motors ‘Damsels in Design’

In the past month, two articles of particular interest appeared on my automotive feed. Both were focused on a subject matter rarely covered in the automotive press – the female automotive designer. The first in Autoblog – while featuring multiple photos of Jay Leno – announced the 2020 Automotive Hall of Fame inductees. Included in this year’s class is Helene Rother Ackernecht, believed to be the first woman to work in automotive design. The second article – which appeared in Automobile magazine – noted the unexpected discovery of what is considered the first car designed by a woman, on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Perhaps not coincidently, these stories follow the 2018 publication of Constance Smith’s Damsels in Design: Women Pioneers in the Automotive Industry. Although women have been active in the auto industry – albeit in small numbers – for over 75 years, the stories of women who influenced car design have just begun to surface.

Shortly after the release of Smith’s book, I attended a small panel in downtown Detroit that featured Smith, Liz Wetzel – Director of Design at GM Global Design, and Mary Ellen Green, a designer for General Motors during the early 1950s. It was a fascinating, enlightening, and sobering discussion. While Greer spent most of the time describing her duties and projects while working for the notorious Harvey Earle, she also subtlety referred to the daily harassment she faced while working as a female in a male dominated profession. Like most of the women in automotive design, Green was relegated to interior design, sculpting, color and trim, or graphic design.

Helene Rother – featured in Smith’s book as well as the Autoblog article – worked at GM during the same period as Green. A former fashion designer, she fled wartime Europe to take advantage of the “shockingly radical” GM female design team (6). She left General Motors after a few years to work with the famed Italian designer Battista Pinin Farina on groundbreaking post-war vehicles for Nash.

As Wetzel notes in the introduction to Smith’s book, “designing an automobile is extremely challenging and exciting – it is perhaps the most complex consumer product.” She adds, “not many women know about automotive design as a career.” (7). Perhaps it is because, as Wetzel remarks, women like Green left the industry as suddenly as they entered it, for reasons alluded to but not mentioned. There appears to have been a considerable gap before the automotive industry once again welcomed the female designer.

During the early 1980s, Marilena Corvasce was hired by Ghia, the European design studio purchased by Ford in 1970. She was assigned with the task of developing a concept car in the style of the Ford Probe. While Corvasce designed the automobile from start to finish, her name was left out of all the press releases. It was only after the car was selected for display at the Peterson Automotive Museum that she was recognized as the 1982 Ghia Brezza chief designer.

Since Corvasce, only a few women have made their marks as automotive designers. Mimi Vandermolen is responsible for the Ford Probe, Diane Allen for the Nissan 350Z, the first BMW Z4 is credited to Juliane Blasi, and Michelle Christensen was the designer of the second-generation Acura NSX. As Wetzel explains, although the careers of these designers suggest that women have made considerable advances, the number of women in the design studio is still relatively low compared to men.

Perhaps the induction of Rother into the Automotive Hall of Fame spurred this sudden journalistic interest in female automotive designers. Or perhaps it was the publication of Smith’s impressive book that brought newfound attention to women in the automotive industry. Whatever the reason, scholars, journalists, and students of automotive history have embarked upon the important yet painstaking task of recovering the work, lives, and histories of female designers. As Wetzel hopes, perhaps this recognition will not only bring attention to those who have heretofore been lost in the automotive archives, but will inspire young women to consider a future in automotive. As Wetzel writes, “if you are a creative woman who loves solving problems and want to be on the journey to create the greatest advances in mobility of our time, I encourage you to consider a career in the auto industry” (7).

Gustafson, Sven. “Pioneering Designer Helene Rother Ackernect joins Jay Leno among Automotive Hall of Fame Inductees.” Autoblog.com 6 Feb 2020.

Rehbock, Billy. “The 1982 Ghia Brezza is the First Car Designed by a Woman.” Automobilemag.com 27 Feb 2020.

Smith, Constance. Damsels of Design: Women Pioneers in the Automotive Industry 1939-1959. Atglen PA: Schiffer, 2018. 

Have you ever considered working in the auto industry? What qualities do you think are important for success in a male-dominated industry? Any and all comments are welcome.