This past week I attended a lecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts which featured Nancy Nichols, author of Women Behind the Wheel: An Unexpected and Personal History of the Car. The book is an overview of women’s automotive history through the personal car experiences of its author. Women Behind the Wheel is significant for a number of reasons. Although men have been writing about their automotive experiences for decades, women’s relationship with the car is rarely examined. Nichols’ book not only succeeds in addressing that lack, but is relatable to any women who has ever owned a car, particularly those of the baby boomer generation. Second of all, it draws attention to the longstanding gendered practices of automotive production, marketing, and ownership which reflect and perpetuate cultural attitudes regarding women and cars. In addition, automotive history is most often focused on specific automobiles and the men who built them; consequently women’s participation in automotive culture is considered less. Nichols’ well-researched manuscript contributes new knowledge through a rarely viewed female lens, and considers how the automobile has contributed to women’s lives in both empowering and dangerous ways.
Finally, as a scholar who has made the investigation of the relationship between women and cars the subject of her ‘third act,’ it has always been my hope that my work would encourage others to explore this little-explored connection in new and engaging ways. While I was pleased and honored to see some of my scholarship cited in Nichols’ book, I was also rather overwhelmed when, after introducing myself, Nancy called me out as the ‘original’ and asked to give me a hug. It was quite a thrill and as I drove home, felt perhaps that the work that I do, while in a very specific niche, does have some value.
As a journalist, editor, and former broadcaster, Nichols’ writing is both accessible and engaging. I would encourage any woman with [or without] a personal connection to cars to read Women Behind the Wheel.
I spent an afternoon last week visiting two car museums that were very close together in location and very similar in terms of collection philosophy. The Millbury Classic Cars and Truck Museum in Millbury, Ohio, and Snook’s Dream Cars, located 26 miles south in Bowling Green, are each the offshoots of private collections passed on from father to son. While the Millbury focuses on vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, Snook’s collection includes cars from the early auto age and prewar era. Because each assemblage of vehicles reflects the personal preferences and vision of each owner, it is not surprising that there are very few artifacts in either location that recognize women as participants in American automotive history. Fortunately, I discovered a few that made the trip to Ohio worthwhile.
The Millbury Classic Cars and Trucks Museum opened its doors in May 2024. It is a large structure consisting of three garages, each added on as the collection expanded. The museum is a family project; the owner’s mother-in-law helped with the wood staining on the walls, while his son helped locate cars to fill the collection. The museum is unique in that provenance is not a requirement for auto inclusion; in fact, the majority of the vehicles are not original but have been modified or customized in some way. Rather than rely on donations, most of the cars were acquired through auction. Because the cars were purchased rather than donated, the accompanying placards have a lot of technical information about the car, but no identification or stories of previous owners. The collection also includes a vast array of auto memorabilia, including gas pumps, signage, and toys. Replicas of movie cars are also a prime attraction.
‘Daisy Duke’ display with 1974 Plymouth Road Runner
Women’s representation in the museum is primarily as mannequins, called upon to place an automobile in a particular cultural or historical moment in time. They are part of a family in a Scooby-Do Mystery Machine-themed 1974 Chevy G10 custom van; riding in the passenger seat of a 1975 Volkswagen Bus; sitting shotgun in the 1979 Pontiac Trans Am of Smokey and the Bandit fame. The only vehicle devoted to a woman is a replica of the yellow 1974 Plymouth Road Runner driven by the fictional character Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard television series. A group of mannequins ‘for sale’ featured a dark haired woman in a racing suit, no doubt a salute to Danica Patrick.
Mary Clark’s 1933 Cadillac
Snook’s Dream Cars was opened in 2002 with the goal of sharing ‘cars for all ages.’ The automobiles on display are all in working condition; the museum’s on-staff mechanic gave us a short tour of the four-bay shop for maintaining collector cars within the building. The museum features a recreated 1940s era Texaco gas station, a showroom of extensive automobile memorabilia, and a car collection presented within period scenes ranging from a 1930s general store to a racetrack from the 1960s. The car collection consists of models from the 1930s, and includes coupes, convertibles, sedans, roadsters, and race cars.
Women were represented in the museum as important historical markers, such as the year in which Amelia Earhart disappeared, as well as the year in which Lyn St James became the first female rookie of the year at Indy. Two of the vehicles with female connections were a 1933 Cadillac owned by Mary Clark of the Kimberly-Clark Company, and a 1954 Kaiser-Darrin. As noted on an accompanying poster, ‘[Henry J.] Kaiser’s wife loved the look of Darrin’s sports car, and convinced her husband to go with the design for a limited production’, which suggests she had a significant amount of automotive influence over her husband.
Stereotypes of women drivers were found on the covers of automotive magazines on display, as well as assorted print advertisements in the ‘for sale’ bin. Symbolic women were also present as hood ornaments and award figures.
Automotive Digest cover featuring the stereotypical ‘backseat driver’
While there weren’t as many representations of women in the two Ohio museum as I had expected, I am hoping that delving deeper into the artifact origins will provide some new insight into women’s automotive history.
