I first visited the Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan a number of years ago. I remember the Sloan Panorama of Transportation as a pretty typical car museum – over 100 vehicles in a voluminous space with placards describing each car. That original Sloan Museum building, built in 1966, closed in 2018 for a major overhaul and expansion. After a 5 year hiatus and $30 million renovation, the newly imagined Sloan Museum of Discovery re-opened to the public in July 2022.
The transformation of the Sloan Museum is not in name only; rather, it embraces a totally new, different, and exciting concept. The old museum was geared toward the car enthusiast – individuals interested in the automobile itself rather than how cars related to the culture. In the new museum, cars are not the focus but rather take a supporting role. As the museum is primarily geared toward children [it was packed with kids during my visit], the automobile is called upon primarily as an educational tool. The automobile is intertwined with Flint’s history, which is reflected in the interactive exhibits in the History Gallery. While the automobile does not take center stage, the influence of the automotive industry is evident in stories about Flint life, employment, neighborhoods, schools, housing, and tourism. The History Gallery leads into the Durant Vehicle Gallery, which offers rotating exhibits about the history and future of the automobile. In this large space, the roughly 30 cars are on display not as examples in their own right, but as representative of automotive innovations that impacted people’s lives, including the automatic transmission, safety features, brakes, tires, comfort, and style.
Unlike its former incarnation, the Sloan Museum of Discovery is not all about cars; rather, the two auto-themed galleries are only part of a larger space which includes four hands-on learning galleries and exhibition hall geared toward young children. One of the galleries included a simulated car repair shop which welcomed kids to try their hands at automotive mechanics. I was pleased to see a young girl in a hard hat and safety vest working diligently under the hood.
The visit to the Sloan Museum of Discovery was undertaken as part of my current project to examine how women are represented in automotive museums. While women were not prominent in the museum exhibits, they were present in small but important ways.
The ‘Dunning Carriage to Cars Exhibit’, part of the History Gallery, is funded by the Margaret Dunning Foundation. The signage accompanying the exhibit reads: ‘Dunning was a successful businesswoman known for her love of classic cars. She established the foundation in her name in 1997. It nurtures the preservation and teaching of automotive history and other charitable interests in Michigan.’ Dunning was a philanthropist, history buff, classic car enthusiast, and huge proponent of automotive education. Her foundation not only funded the exhibit in Flint, but also programs in automotive technology and auto design in various schools throughout the state. Her contributions to the Sloan are in tandem with the museum’s mission to serve as an educational experience and resource for residents of Genesee county and other Sloan visitors.
Other references to women include their important role as members of the Emergency Brigade during the 1936 General Motors Sit-Down Strike. As noted in Jalopnik, “Many think of factory work, and therefore a strike in the automotive industry, as something primarily men would do. But it was the members of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, a paramilitary group of women inside the United Auto Workers union, who proved to be the secret weapon in that group’s triumph over General Motors.” Women are also included in exhibits focused on safety – in the car and on the factory floor.
The museum does not shy away from the auto industry’s negative impacts on the city of Flint. An underlying theme in the History Gallery involves the automobile’s affect on race relations through the displacement of black Flint residents via expansion, highway construction, and eventual loss of industry to the area.
While my intention in visiting the Sloan was to examine how women were represented, I came away impressed with how the museum endeavors to serve as a source of automotive education of all who visit, regardless of age, race, or gender.
R.E. Olds Transportation Museum in Lansing, Michigan
I continued my investigation of women’s representation in automotive museums by stopping by the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum in Lansing, Michigan. As I work my way through this project, I am discovering that the focus of a particular museum is most often determined by the interests and intention of its founders. While the museums I have visited thus far have been structured around either a place or a collector’s interest, the Olds Museum – like its name – is an automotive collection assembled based on a major car manufacturer and the man who lent it its name. The layout of the museum reveals its two identities: first, as a [literal] road through early Oldsmobile history, and second, as a looser collection of more recent Olds automobiles, additional REO endeavors, artifacts, related businesses and industries, and a bit of 1950s car culture. While the first section of the museum is tightly organized, the large back ‘dealership’ room is a little more hodgepodge, encompassing a wide variety of Olds, GM, Fisher Body, and tangential industry paraphernalia.
Oldsmobile Girls Club Artifacts
Because the museum is centered on a man and a car, women are not well represented. Like many of the museums I’ve visited, [visual] references to women are primarily related to fashion. There are many female mannequins placed throughout the museum garbed in the styles of a particular time related to the automobile. Other references to women include those who have donated vehicles to the collection, advertisements and promotional material, photos of [unidentified] female factory workers, and ephemera [such as employee nametags]. A glass case includes a small display of items related to the Oldsmobile Girls Club – a 1950s-60s women’s community organization – that includes photographs, programs, mugs, sewing kits, charm bracelets, vanity items, ashtrays, and a cookbook.
Metta Olds Reading Desk
While women – as workers, drivers, and club members – take a back seat to the major automotive leaders on display, there are two that are named, and thus deserve special attention. The first is Metta Olds, who was married to Ransom, popularly known as ‘R.E.’ The tour through the museum begins with a focus on the Olds family and homestead. Much of that is devoted to Metta – photos, family trees, furniture, personal items, and clothing. Metta was very much a silent partner and supporter of her husband; a book titled Loves, Lives, and Labors was written about their strong relationship and Metta’s roll as ‘woman-behind-the-man’. While, as the wife of the founder, Metta could easily be referred to as the ‘First Lady of Oldsmobile’, that title was, in fact, bestowed on Helen Earley, a longtime employee who, through a number of positions, created a position for herself as the resident Oldsmobile historian. Automotive historian Robert Tate writes that Earley, as a scholar, historian, and archivist, ‘contributed a great deal of knowledge to the automotive community.’ During her career, Earley and another retiree helped establish the Oldsmobile History Center. She also co-authored two books on Oldsmobile history: Setting the Pace: Oldsmobile’s First 100 Years written with James R. Walkinshaw, and Oldsmobile: A War Years Pictorial. Earley was also one of the founding task force members responsible for creating the R.E. Olds Museum; she also served as a board member for the National Automotive History Collection, the Library and Research Center for the Antique Automobile Club of America, and was a recipient of the prestigious James J. Bradley Award from the Society of Automotive Historians. This award recognized the ‘Outstanding contributions to the preservation of historical materials related to the automobiles produced by Oldsmobile and for the spirit of helpfulness to writers, researchers, historians and restorers’.
Despite Earley’s importance to Oldsmobile history and the museum, one has to search to find out anything about her. There is her name over the board room, a portrait on the board room wall, and a card clipped to a driving outfit on one of the displays. I finally discovered a glass case containing some photos and her self-authored obituary in a hidden away corner of the ‘dealership’ room. Although recognized as the designated ‘first lady’, Earley receives what can be described as second-class attention.
Helen Earley ‘The First Lady of Oldsmobile’
The RE Olds Transportation Museum was an interesting stop on my tour of automotive museums. While the collection focuses on a specific individual and the company he founded, women’s unique contributions to Oldsmobile can be uncovered if one looks hard enough.
Paul Niedermeyer, writing for Curbside Classics, penned a couple of interesting articles over the past year on the 1950s era Rambler Cross Country. Calling on automotive advertising of the time, Niedermeyer notes how the Rambler was often marketed specifically to the female driver. The Rambler, as ‘the first lifestyle wagon ever,’ was heralded not only for its suitability for growing families, but also for its bold style and unusual, somewhat radical appearance. Advertising was directed not only to suburban moms, but also to fashion-conscious women who desired both practicality and pizazz in the cars they drove. A key part of making the Rambler appealing to women was drawing attention to its interior fabrics and trim, designed by the renowned Helene Rother. As Niedermeyer remarks, ‘a woman’s touch can’t be easily faked.’ Advertising for the Rambler often featured famous women – including American theatre star Margaret Sullavan and the wife of actor Jimmy Stewart – to associate the vehicle with glamour, luxury, class, and discriminating taste. Unlike other automotive advertising of the time, Rambler had a fair amount of success by targeting more affluent and better educated buyers, especially women.
More than a year after the original article appeared, Niedermeyer responded to a previously posted comment that had apparently been gnawing at him for some time. The reader, focusing specifically on the notion that women were important Rambler purchasers, posted, ‘In defense of men, though, many of those 50s women buyers were spending lavishly their husband’s and father’s money.’ Niedermeyer, taking great offense at this comment, countered with multiple examples of how the scenario painted by the defensive reader was unlikely. Calling upon his own experience, he recalled how his father traded in his mother’s car without her knowledge or blessing. As he writes, ‘she was furious, but what was she going to do?’ Niedermeyer also notes that during the 1950s, a growing number of women had careers. In fact, he argues, the targeting of female consumers by Rambler was instrumental in allowing the automaker to survive the early to mid 1950s, when other domestic compacts were failing. Surprisingly [at least to me] Curbside Classic readers – primarily men – joined Niedermeyer in expressing offense to the stereotypical response. Many offered examples of how the women in their respective lives – i.e. strongly opinionated moms, older maiden aunts, and [assumed] lesbian teachers – made their own car buying decisions. Rather than reinforce the generalized stereotype of hapless and uninformed women drivers, the commenters offered a variety of car-purchasing scenarios influenced by family dynamics, finances, marital status, sexual orientation, and the progressiveness of women and men alike.
The Curbside Classic articles caught my attention not only because of the focus on female consumers, but because the author’s comments, as well as those of his readers, brought to mind those of a group of elderly women I interviewed for a project a few years ago. In 2016 I spoke to 21 women in their 80s and 90s – of the same generation of those targeted in 1950s automotive advertising – about their early automotive experiences. Included in the conversations were reminisces regarding individual car histories. Although automakers such as Rambler attempted to lure female customers, the majority of the women I spoke to, when entering marriage, did not have a vehicle of their own, but shared one with husbands. When children appeared on the scene, women fought hard for cars of their own to make their lives easier. However, the majority of these vehicles were not shiny new Ramblers; rather, they were most often described as ‘jalopies’’, ‘clunkers’, or ‘old and cheap’. While there were a few women whose husbands ‘surprised’ them with fancy cars for birthdays or special occasions, most were grateful for anything that offered them a degree of independence.
Since many of the women interviewed were located in the greater Detroit area, it was not uncommon for them to work in auto-related industries, or to have friends or relatives who did. This allowed them to purchase a car a family member had previously driven, secure the inside track on a good used vehicle, or take advantage of an automotive employee discount. Others took over the old family car when a new automobile was purchased. Yet no matter how the car was acquired, the women had a definite say in automobile selection, and would accompany husbands to the dealership to make their desires known. If spouses purchased cars without their wives’ input, they often found themselves heading back to the sales office. Not surprisingly, single women – whether unmarried, widowed, or divorced – had the freedom to purchase the car they wanted without male influence or intervention. What became clear from these conversations is that what women wished for in a car – i.e. functionality, economy, and reliability – often differed from the qualities desired by men. Consequently, making their own automotive needs and requirements known was a very important element of the car purchase process. The responses from the women in this project – as well as the Curbside Classic comments – suggests that women were exceptionally influential in car purchases, particularly if it was a car they would be driving. In the present day, it is estimated that women buy 65 percent of all new cars sold in the USA, and influence 85 percent of car buying decisions (Findlay). It is a practice that, as the responses suggest, began as soon as women took the wheel.
Niedermeyer was correct to question the stereotypical comment of one of his readers; i.e. that women’s car purchases were made possible by lavishly spending their husband’s or father’s money. While certainly there were some women who were ‘surprised’ by car purchases made by husbands, the majority of women made their own automotive decisions. As the Curbside Classic articles and my own research suggest, if a woman drove a Rambler, it was most likely because she had the means and the desire to do so.
Findlay, Steve. ‘Women in Majority as Car Buyers, But Not as Dealership Employees.’ Wardsauto.com 20 Sept 2016.
Lezotte, Chris. ‘Born to Drive: Elderly Women’s Recollections of Early Automotive Experiences.’ The Journal of Transport History 40(3) (2019): 395-417.
Niedermeyer, Paul. ‘How Rambler Won the Compact and Price Wars of the 1950s and Saved American Motors.’ Curbsideclassic.com 25 Jan 2021.
Niedermeyer, Paul. ‘She Drives a Rambler’, and No, She ‘Wasn’t Lavishly Spending Her Husband’s Money.’ Curbsideclassic.com 3 October 2022.
A recent Jalopnik article asked its readers to elaborate on how they ‘got into cars.’ While the responses included references to racing, car magazines, and movies, the majority fell into two categories. The first route to a life as an auto enthusiast was through a relationship with a male relative or mentor, most often one’s dad. The second was a childhood preoccupation with ‘toys that move,’ whether those vehicles were the popular Hot Wheels, Matchbox cars, model cars, slot cars, Tonka trucks, or racing sets. Although women compose over half of US licensed drivers, cars are very much perceived as a male interest. This was evident in the comments accompanying the Jalopnik article which were, as far as I could tell, posted overwhelmingly by men. This suggests that while women are engaged with the automobile as drivers, they are less likely than their male counterparts to take on the mantle of ‘auto aficionado.’ If the Jalopnik article does, in fact, reflect the most common routes to automotive interest, it would appear that such influences are absent in women’s early lives.
In my own research into women’s relationship with the car – particularly as participants in automotive cultures traditionally associated with the male driver [i.e. muscle cars, pickup trucks, and motorsports] – the encouragement of a male family member or mentor was instrumental in instigating and maintaining a girl’s or young woman’s automotive interest. Many of the women interviewed in these various projects noted the importance of fathers, boyfriends, and husbands in acquiring a love for all things automotive. It is significant to note that the majority who responded in this manner were without male siblings, which suggests that dad would not have had as much concern in encouraging his daughters if he had sons [one has to wonder if the Force sisters would have made such an impact on the drag racing world if John Force had a son or two.] A much smaller percentage of the women noted how they developed in interest in cars by ‘borrowing’ the matchbox cars of brothers or male playmates. Young girls are rarely gifted toy cars; toys that move have always been promoted as proper toys for boys. While the notion that ‘girls just aren’t interested in cars’ has become somewhat of a rationale for women’s general lack of participation in automotive culture and industry, the gendered division of playthings -particularly toy cars and trucks – has deprived girls from the likelhood of developing a passion for the automobile.
Toys often serve as introductions to and reinforcements of cultural and gender expectations. As among the earliest and most influential technologies with which children come into contact, toys ‘transmit to children […] particular views of gender relations, examples of appropriate behavior, and character models’ (Varney 2002, 153). The gendered demarcation of toys was well established by the early twentieth century. The transition from horse drawn carriages to gasoline-powered automobiles was reflected in the playthings available to young boys – horse and buggy toys were replaced by miniature cars. Young girls also experienced a gendered progression – the Victorian sewing doll was superseded by the baby doll. While baby dolls reinforced the expectation that women would live quiet and unassuming lives as mothers, ‘toy vehicles captured the variety of men’s life of automobility, as drivers of status cars, as deliverers of useful goods, as roadmakers, and race car drivers. These were male machines that opened up a dynamic modern world to their drivers’ (Cross 2009, 56). Much like the vehicles they imitated, toy cars were irrefutably associated with technological aptitude, risk taking behavior, and maleness. As Ruth Oldenziel (2001) suggests, ‘toys were intended not only to amuse and entertain but also as socializing mechanisms, as educational devices and as scaled-down versions of the realities of the larger adult-dominated social world’ (42).
The lack of automotive exposure in childhood can have significant repercussions in adulthood. As I noted in an examination of women’s car advice websites (Lezotte 2014), without a grasp of automotive knowledge women are likely to experience significantly more discrimination in purchasing and servicing automobiles than their male counterparts. And without early exposure to cars, women are less likely to consider careers in auto-related industries or professions. Links between machinery and masculinity, originating in the assignment of mechanical toys to boys, has kept particular skills and professions within male domination. ‘In a society which thinks highly of technology and which there is an elaborate relationship between power and technology,’ notes Wendy Varney (2002), ‘this exclusion from that domain can effectively lock one out of a vast area of influence’ (168). Not only does this lack of auto interest and education limit women’s occupational opportunities, but can lead to a scenario in which decisions in vehicle engineering, design, production, and use are left primarily to the men in charge. As Wheel writer Emily Fritz (2018) asserts, ‘As we neglect to involve girls in car culture from a young age, we are also neglecting to involve them in the opportunity to learn and gain skills such as the ability to use tools, the ability to formulate basic civil engineering, and the ability to come in contact with the ways in which moving parts work—all of which are found in many car-based boy’s toys.’
The Jalopnik article – and the overwhelmingly male responses – is not only indicative of what is certainly a mostly male readership, but also demonstrates the importance of toys that move in the development of automotive interest in young boys. Since the majority of young girls grow up to be drivers, it is puzzling [but not surprising] that they are dissuaded from engaging with cars at the age in which they are most impressionable. But then again, most boys grow up to be fathers, yet are discouraged, if not ostracized, when demonstrating any interest in dolls. Such is the gendered power of toys.
Note: some of this material is taken from an article-in-progress on the Barbie car.
Cross, Gary S. 2009. Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood.
DaSilva, Steve. 2022. ‘These Are the Stories of How You Got Into Cars.’ Jalopnik 10 Oct.
Fritz, Emily. 2018. “The Harm of Gender Roles in Car Culture: An Argument for Getting Girls Involved.” Wheel.
Lezotte, Chris. 2014. ‘Women Auto Know: Automotive Knowledge, Auto Activism, and Women’s Online Car Advice.’ Feminist Media Studies.
Oldenziel, Ruth. 2001. ‘Boys and Their Toys: The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, 1930-1968, and the Making of a Male Technical Domain.’ In Boys and Their Toys: Masculinity, Class and Technology in America, edited by Roger Horowitz, 139-168.
Varney, Wendy. 2002. ‘Of Men and Machines: Images of Masculinities in Boys’ Toys.’ Feminist Studies 28(1): 153-174.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan as part of my newest project that focuses on women’s representation in automotive museums and collections. I last visited the Gilmore a number of years ago during a muscle car event as part of research conducted for my book. As that car show was held outdoors, I never had an opportunity to explore the many buildings on the expansive Gilmore complex.
‘Quiet, Clean, and Easy to Operate’
The Gilmore Museum was originally established in the early 1960s as a place to store and display the growing automobile collection of Donald Gilmore. Although the museum has grown significantly since that time, inhabiting a number of buildings on the 90 acre parcel, it is still very much a collector’s museum, centered on the particular automotive interests of its founder. While the collection includes popular cars from the 1950s and 60s, the overwhelming majority of vehicles on display hail from the early auto age. Not only are there rooms in the main building devoted to steam powered automobiles, the Franklin Automobile Company of the early 20th century, cars of the 1920s and 30s, as well as early Lincoln models, but there are separate on site buildings featuring the Ford Model A and Cadillac LaSalle. These automobiles represent eras in which automobile production and car culture participation was very much a white male enterprise. This narrow focus on a particular automotive experience is no doubt responsible for the invisibility of women as owners, drivers, or influencers within the automotive collections and exhibitions. The introductory video – which visitors view before entering the museum – states that the museum’s mission is ‘to tell the story of America through the automobile.’ However, the stories that are told – beginning with those of the youngest car enthusiast – are filtered through a determinedly male perspective.
1886 Benz
Of the over 400 cars currently on display, only a handful have any female reference. One of those is the 1886 Benz. Bertha Benz, the wife and business partner of automobile inventor Karl Benz, is recognized as the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance. In doing so, notes the display placard, she brought the Benz Patent-Motorwagen worldwide attention and got the company its first sales. Mrs. Benz is often rightly regarded as an ‘exceptional’ woman in automotive history, as both an influencer and outspoken proponent of women’s automobility.
The only other car directly linked to a woman is a 1971 Dodge Challenger Convertible donated to the museum by its original owner. Lena Plymale purchased the car at the age of 19, used it as a daily driver until 1978, and kept it in storage until its 2008 restoration.
Lena Plymale’s 1971 Dodge Challenger Convertible
The Benz and the Challenger are the only vehicles in the massive collection in which the ‘story’ is told by a woman. There are two others that refer to women in a general sense. The 1931 Buick Victoria Coupe is displayed alongside advertising that reflects the manufacturer’s efforts to promote this particular vehicle to women drivers; as the ad reads, the synchro-mesh transmission ‘makes every woman an expert driver, enabling her to shift gears smoothly and easily at any speed.’ The display for the 1915 Rauch & Lang Electric noted that both Mrs. Henry [Clara] Ford and Mrs. Thomas [Mina] Edison drove electric vehicles. Whether this was the women’s choice or whether they were ‘encouraged’ to drive electrics by their husbands is impossible to say.
The majority of reference to women in the museum is related not to cars, but to fashion. There are photographs, advertisements, display cases, female mannequins, and signage which link women to styles of the respective eras scattered among the various automotive displays.
What I found most disconcerting in my tour of the museum was the Automotive Activity Center geared toward the young car enthusiast, an enclosed area with auto-related play activities and information. Two of the walls were devoted to a display of vehicle designs produced by winners of the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild competition held from the 1930s to 1960s. This national auto design contest, sponsored by the Fisher Body Division of General Motors, ‘helped identify and nurture a whole generation of designers and design executives’ (Jacobus 2). As the poster on display indicates, the competition was for boys only. This production of male technological knowledge, Ruth Oldenziel writes, ‘involved an extraordinary mobilization of organizational, economic, and cultural resources’ (139) in which ‘girls found themselves excluded as a matter of course’ (141). A large collection of early automotive toys fills two display cases on an adjoining wall. Of the hundreds of toy cars on display, only two feature a female behind the wheel. A young girl entering this activity center would not see herself; rather, she would walk away with the impression that the automotive world is a male one, reinforcing the gendered assumptions that have permeated car culture for over 100 years.
For the future [male] Cadillac owner
Certainly much of women’s invisibility in the collection can be attributed to the original intentions and interests of its founder. The Gilmore is, in fact, a reflection of an older [white] male sensibility, an expression of an automotive education in which women were absent or excluded. However, what is distressing is that in the 60 years of its existence, very little effort has been made to integrate women into the history of the automobile. While the museum claims to tell the story of America through the automobile, it is a story in which women are most often absent in other than the most stereotypical of ways.
Jacobus, John. The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild: An Illustrated History. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2005.
Oldenziel, Ruth. “Boys and Their Toys: The Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, 1930-1968, and the Making of a Male Technical Domain.” In Boys and Their Toys: Masculinity, Class and Technology in America, edited by Roger Horowitz, New York: Routledge, 2001: 139-168.
While in graduate school during the 2000s, I devised an independent study focused on my growing interest in the relationship between women and cars. What follows is one of the response papers in which I examine how, in an appeal to male viewers, TV producers relied on the automobile to add masculinity to television programming during the 1960s and 70s.
Since its inception, television has been blamed for a wide variety of society’s ills. The lowering of our nation’s mores, and the rise in illiteracy, indolence, violence and promiscuity have all, at some point, been attributed to television programming. However, during the industry’s infancy, television posed an even greater threat to its growing audience. As Katie Mills argues in “TV Gets Hip on Route 66,” it was the influence of television as a feminizing medium that had both sociologists and programmers up in arms.
George Maharis, Martin Milner, and a 1960 Corvette in Route 66
During this period, intellectuals, such as those of the ‘Beat’ generation, expressed anxiety about the inevitable cultural impoverishment of TV audiences. The notion of a “wasteland,” taken from the poem of the same name by TS Elliot, was often invoked to describe women’s and children’s TV programming. What television required, it was suggested, was a dose of masculinity. This infusion of manhood was necessary not only to increase the television viewer base, but perhaps more important, to avoid the feminization of the American audience as well. To attain this goal, a television program was created which featured two handsome young men accompanied by the ultimate symbol of masculine power: the American sportscar. Thus in 1960, Route 66 was born, in which Buz and Tod travel the US highways in a Chevrolet Corvette, rescuing the TV audience from femininity.
Mills writes, “In this ‘cool’ cultural climate of television, the series Route 66 began airing in 1960 as a weekly road story about two non-conforming travelers” (69). The program aired during the prime Friday night time slot, when “exurbanite” fathers were most likely to be home watching television with their families. This road genre series offered CBS a way to dispel the notion of television as a feminine media. In addition, the narrative of the program, which found the male heroes in a different town along Route 66 each week, often provided stories that addressed liberal moral stands, which was quite progressive given the social climate of the postwar era. The Corvette provided mobility, both literally and figuratively, for the two young men, enabling them to travel to new locations and social situations each week. Storylines of the disenfranchised, such as victims of domestic violence or racial bigotry, were made possible by automobility. The automobile provided masculinity to the genre, yet also provided the opportunity for narratives that were not exclusively about men.
However, despite the initial success of Route 66, it appears that television executives did not believe the show was masculine enough. The CBS president insisted that Route 66 be revamped to include “more broads, bosoms and fun” (76). While Route 66 had tried its best to avoid gender politics, the networks were anxious to attract a larger male audience. Thus, as Mills tells us, television honchos relied on “such male-oriented gimmicks as fast cars, macho conflict and big busted actresses” (77). Such associations have pervaded the use of the automobile in television throughout much of its history. While TV shows that preceded Route 66, such as Danny Thomas, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best, used cars to reflect and codify suburban lifestyles and mores, the advent of the muscle car during the late 1960s and its appearance in television dramas reaffirmed the automobile as a symbol of masculinity.
David Soul [Hutch], Paul Michael Glaser [Starsky], and a 1976 Ford Gran Torino
The automobile in Route 66 was never considered a character in the drama. Rather, its significance rested in its use as a metaphor for mobility and masculinity. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the role of the TV car often equaled, if not exceeded, that of its human counterparts. Unlike programs such as Route 66, in which the car contributed masculinity in an understated, almost subliminal manner, automobiles were inserted into 1970s shows to attract a male audience interested primarily in the car. Writing about the Batmobile, in Hollywood TV and Movie Cars, William Krause asserts, “ the enormous popularity of the car primed the pump for countless television cars to become as famous as their human costars” (103). Cartoon-type dramas, such as Batman, The Green Hornet and the Monkees, featured outrageous automobiles constructed from stock muscle cars. In programs that followed, such as Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Magnum PI, “hot” cars often served to divert the male audience from weakness in storyline and character development. Krause writes of the “General,” a 1969 Dodge Charger with a 440-ci V8 Magnum engine and an A-727 automatic transmission featured in Hazzard, “the car was really the only redeeming portion of the show” (120). Whereas the original intent of Route 66 was to attract the male viewer through “masculine” content and subject matter, shows such as Hazzard dismissed such lofty ambitions, and simply concentrated on “fast cars, macho conflicts and big-busted actresses.”
Jerry Van Dyke and his “Mother,” a 1928 Porter Stanhope touring car
One of the few attempts to disrupt the conflation of masculinity and automobiles on television was in the 1965 ill-fated comedy My Mother the Car. The series, which only lasted one season, revolved around the antics of the protagonist’s mother, reincarnated as a car. However, she does not come back as a cool Corvette or fast Trans Am, but rather, as an antique and antiquated 1928 Porter. Described in the series theme song as “my very own guiding star,” the Porter’s main activity is keeping her grown son, played by Jerry Van Dyke, out of trouble. Speaking only to her son through the car radio, the Porter is the cast character with the most smarts and common sense. However, as Deborah Clarke writes in Driving Women, “despite the fascination with technology – or maybe because of it – the American public wanted no part of a show that insisted that a woman and a car could be one and the same” (74). As a car’s primary function in television is to infuse it with masculinity, My Mother the Car suggests that the automobile as a mother has very little appeal.
As the car in television suggests, the automobile is not only an American symbol of masculinity, but is often called upon to make TV programming more masculine as well. In American society, that which is feminine has less value. Faced with the possibility of a feminized, and therefore, undesirable medium, TV producers and programmers have traditionally called upon technology, in the form of an automobile, to add masculinity, and therefore intrinsic value, to what is viewed on the television screen.
Clarke, Deborah. Driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Krause, William. Hollywood TV and Movie Cars. Minneapolis: Motorbooks, 2001.
Marling, Karal Ann. “America’s Love Affair with the Automobile in the Television Age” in Design Quarterly 149 (1989): 5-22.
Mills, Katie. The Road Story and the Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fiction, and Television. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.
One of the annual traditions in the metropolitan Motor City is the Woodward Dream Cruise. Held annually on the third Saturday of August, the cruise is a day-long celebration of car culture. Instituted in 1995 as an effort to raise money for a children’s soccer field in Ferndale, Michigan, the event now attracts more than 1.5 million visitors. Featuring more than 40,000 muscle cars and street machines, the Woodward Dream Cruise is now considered the world’s largest one-day vintage car event.
Cruisin’ Woodward in the 1970s
Woodward Avenue was chosen not only for its central location – it is the unofficial divider of metropolitan Detroit’s east and west sides – but more importantly for its significant muscle car history. It is rumored that John DeLorean found inspiration for the Pontiac GTO – considered by aficionados as the original muscle car – while driving home from General Motors in downtown Detroit to his home in Bloomfield Hills. In the glory days of muscle car culture, young men in their Chevelles, Camaros, Challengers, and Barracudas could be spotted on summer evenings drag racing from light to light down the long suburban expanse of Woodward Avenue. The original Dream Cruise was true to this vision; the two right lanes were devoted to classic muscle cars and hot rods, while auto enthusiasts and curious spectators lined up curbside to take in the style and sounds of the magnificent machines of the past.
2022 Mustang Alley
However in recent years, the cruise and the cars that drive in it have changed. While there are still a few true muscle cars in attendance they have been taken over by modern muscle. This was nowhere more evident than at the traditional “Mustang Alley” display held each year in Ferndale. Once populated by classic Mustangs, 9 Mile Road is now the place to park the new generation of pony cars. What has also changed are the folks who own them. As a product of the 60s and 70s, classic muscle cars are overwhelmingly driven by members of the baby boomer generation. Now in their 70s, the grey haired men are less inclined to take an unreliable 50 year old car into the stop and go traffic of Woodward on Dream Cruise day. The newer cars reflect a changing population of muscle car aficionados. The younger generation, while acknowledging the Mustang’s significant history, prefer the speed, safety, economy, reliability and superior power of modern muscle. And once discouraged, if not outright banished, from participating in muscle car culture, women now take pleasure and pride in the power and excitement the new cars have to offer. Women are now credited with purchasing over one third of Mustangs, suggesting not only that the female motorist has become more car savvy, but also that the masculinity associated with Detroit muscle is ever-so-slowly shifting.
Past Mustang Alley participant – featured in Power Under Her Foot
A recent Detroit Free Press article made note of the changing automotive population, referring to the 2022 Woodward Dream Cruise as ‘a celebration of tradition and new.’ As an aging boomer who has done extensive research on the muscle car, I miss seeing the panther pink and grabber blue muscle cars of the past driving down the Woodward Avenue of my youth. But as one who writes about women and cars, I am delighted to see women challenging gender stereotypes and embracing performance and power through the purchase and display of fast and noisy modern muscle.
Note: One month after this blog was posted, Phoebe Wall Howard, an auto writer for the Detroit Free Press, spoke to a number of Mustang-owning-women – which she refers to as ‘Mustang Mamas’ – in an article to promote the Detroit Auto Show.
While in graduate school during the 2000s, I devised an independent study focused on my growing interest in the relationship between women and cars. What follows is one of the response papers in which I examine how – in the years following World War II – automotive style was reconfigured from a feminine trait to one that suggested masculinity and male power.
Ford’s Model T was so utilitarian, it remained virtually unchanged in style for nearly 20 years.
As the originator of the utilitarian, mass-produced automobile, Henry Ford had little respect for style. Ford believed the ultimate value of the motorcar rested in its reputation as a safe, efficient, and reliable mode of transportation. The car’s outward appearance, in Ford’s estimation, was of little consequence. History suggests that Ford was a rather narrow-minded man, and as such, adhered to racial, ethnic, and gendered stereotypes. His opposition to automotive style, therefore, was based not only on the belief that the car was defined primarily by functionality, but also because beauty and design were considered feminine characteristics, and should have no association with masculine automotive technology. In Ford’s “manly, efficiency-obsessed world of work,” concern for beauty was not only unwelcome, but was an indication of gender deviance (Gartman). Ford’s long-standing estrangement with his only child, Edsel, was often attributed to the elder’s intolerance of his son’s artistic leanings and suspected unmanliness. Like the “tough guys” who followed him, Ford believed “beauty belonged in the parlor and questioned the masculinity of any man who tried to put it on a car” (Gartman).
1939 Lincoln Continental designed by Henry’s ‘unmanly’ son Edsel.
The emphasis on car design rather than function was the brainchild of one of Henry Ford’s staunchest competitors. Rather than work on improving automotive technology, which was a rather costly proposition, General Motor’s Alfred Sloan concentrated on “aesthetic innovation ” (Gartman). By changing the cosmetic appearance of the car, Sloan could offer the public a wider variety of styles and models without considerable financial investment. While this proposition made sound business sense, the association of auto design with femininity presented a considerable obstacle. Auto historians offer a number of factors that contributed to the eventual acceptance of the stylish and beautiful automobile. However, there was no greater influence than that of the flamboyant and charismatic automotive designer Harvey Earl.
Earl called upon both his larger-than-life personality and his personal design philosophy to change the way consumers felt about automobile design. While Earl has been described as a “dandy” in both dress and mannerisms, he overcompensated for such characteristics by cultivating a rather crude and super-masculine demeanor. Earl personally embodied both the stylish and the masculine through his large, impeccably attired frame, off-color language, and overbearing personality. In many ways, Earl was the ultimate personification of the automobiles he designed.
Harvey Earl and the 1951 Le Sabre
Social changes also contributed to the acceptance of automobile styling and its feminine associations. As former GM designer Leonard Pilato attests, “it is hard to separate auto design from human and social factors.” Auto historian Gartman suggests the gendered division between beauty and utility was breaking down during this time, as “men subjected to the savage utility and efficiency of mass production were looking to the home and its non utilitarian consumer goods for compensation.” Earl’s automotive designs, inspired by images of fantasy and flight, provided drivers with modes of entertainment and escape. While style may have been considered feminine, the forms on which Earl based his designs, which conjured up images of jet planes, speed and futuristic spacecraft, were examples of masculine technology and ideals. The emphasis on style rather than function also created new cultural meanings for automobiles. Rather than modes of transportation, cars became symbols of status, success, and power. The image, rather than the technology, of the car provided its owner with a new identity. As Gartman writes, the increased size of cars offered consumers “psychic compensation […] to convince them that their lives were indeed better.”
Auto historians often maintain that auto design became embraced once it became distanced from femininity. However, I would argue that beautiful cars became desirable because they were, in fact, regarded as female. The cars of the post World War II era were extremely feminine in appearance. The smooth curves and softened angles are reminiscent of women’s bodies. The pastel tones of 1950s automobiles are mirrored in the clothing of 1950s women. Many of the cars of this period are exceptionally “pretty” by today’s standards. The pink 1956 Thunderbird and lime green 1954 Corvette on display at the Henry Ford are extremely feminine cars that men often coveted. While men are known to drive particular cars to lure the opposite sex, they also seek to acquire mastery over the cars they drive. In a patriarchy, men seek to maintain power and control over women. If an automobile is considered female, power over the car may equate power over women. This equation had special significance to many men in the years following World War II.
1956 Chevrolet Bel Air
After returning from the Second World War, men often discovered that the women they left behind were infused with independence and self-sufficiency, garnered through well-paying war time work. Uncomfortable with women’s developing autonomy, men took back the work in the public sphere and sent the women home. Husbands and fathers sought to regain the dominance of the prewar years as breadwinners and heads of households. They sought to purchase cars that symbolized this reassumed status. The cars many drove were masculine in size yet feminine in appearance. They were often given feminine names and referred to as “she.” The stylish car becomes the beautiful woman men conquer by owning and driving. As Gartman writes, “in the ultra-macho subculture of auto designers, sex was surely an important appeal.” Sex and the automobile have become intertwined not only because the automobile is a site of sexual encounter, but also because the car is often perceived as a spirited woman that male drivers seek to tame.
Men with style, especially white men, have always been sexually suspect. Equating stylish cars with beautiful women allows men to appreciate automotive design while keeping masculinity intact. Harvey Earl was instrumental in making style an integral part of the auto manufacturing process, and was influential in the acceptance of the importance of auto design. It is unfortunate that the equation of stylish cars as beautiful women to be controlled and conquered remains a mode of such acceptance for so many drivers.
Gartman, David. “Tough Guys and Pretty Boys: The Cultural Antagonisms of Engineering and Aesthetics in Automotive History.” Automobile in American Life and Society University of Michigan Dearborn.
Jalopnik recently posted a question to its readers concerning family automotive brand loyalty. As auto journalist Steve DaSilva exclaimed, “Car companies, like any other, try to build brand loyalty – but they often go one step further, trying to build loyalty through a whole family.” Since I am a baby boomer who grew up in Detroit, the families I knew were most often loyal to a particular USA brand. Since so many folks in Michigan are somehow connected to an auto company – they work there, or know someone who does – the brand of choice is dependent on the relative who can get you the best deal. In a past project focused on elderly women’s early automotive experiences, I interviewed female residents of two senior living establishments – one in Louisville Kentucky and the other in a Detroit suburb. While some of the Louisville women had automotive connections through family members or friends which influenced their vehicle choices, the loyalty to American cars among the Michiganders was almost universal. Although not all had friends or family in the auto industry, most had husbands who – as auto ‘experts’ – made the choices as to which cars their spouses could drive. There is an underlying ‘buy American’ sentiment in the greater Detroit area, particularly among the older generation. Thus many of the women waited until they were widowed or financially independent to choose a brand to their liking. What was perhaps not surprising is that a good number of the women I interviewed – when having the opportunity to select their own car – went with a Japanese manufacturer. The women cited the safety features, economy, reliability, resale value, and smaller size as reasons they chose to switch allegiance to an import.
Growing up in a carless household [which is a whole other story], my siblings and I knew and recognized the brands [through games of who-can-name-the-car-brand-the-fastest often conducted out the window on the bus or parking lot] but really weren’t car savvy enough to have a favorite manufacturer. However as an adult, I had many relatives – brothers-in-law and nephews – who were engineers at Ford. So if I wanted to get a car on the A plan, I had to choose an offering from the Ford Motor Company. My brother and sister took advantage of this car buying deal at every opportunity filling their garages with Ford products; I, however, was more selective. As we needed a large vehicle for dog hauling, we took advantage of the Ford discount to obtain vans and SUVs that would suit our purposes. Much to the chagrin of my extended family, however, the cars I chose for myself were always imports.
When I purchased my first car in 1970, domestic car manufacturers offered very few small, economical models. As a college student, I selected the least expensive new car I could find, which was a Volkswagen Beetle [which seemed to be the car of choice at Wayne State University, which at that time was primarily a commuter school.] I remember the remarks of my Detroit neighbors when I made my purchase – they weren’t pretty. The ‘Buy American’ slogan was pretty strong in my next of the woods; purchasing a German car painted me, in their eyes, as a traitor, a less-than American. However, I knew what I wanted, could afford, and happily drove that car for seven years until it was totaled while parked in front of my apartment. Most of the personal cars I have owned since that time have been VWs or Audis. The only way I have redeemed myself somewhat with my family was in my choice of classic cars. Not only were my cars made in America, but were produced by Ford – a 1949 Ford Coupe and 1967 Ford Shelby Mustang, to be exact. The only catch is, they were made so long ago I couldn’t get the family Ford discount.
While in graduate school during the 2000s, I devised an independent study focused on my growing interest in the relationship between women and cars. What follows is one of the response papers in which I examine how feminist historians initially responded to the question “What is Woman’s Place in American Car Culture?”, incorporating some of the more recent literature in women’s automotive scholarship.
In 1980, Charles L. Sanford introduced a question that few in the auto industry, academia or popular culture had ever bothered to ask. And that is, “what is woman’s place in American car culture?” Sanford’s inquiry attempted to initiate an investigation into women’s limited and often invisible role in American car culture and automotive social history. Sanford made visible a notable lack in scholarship devoted to the relationship between women and cars. In the two decades that followed, feminist historians and literary scholars initiated an effort to address Sanford’s question.
Virginia Scharff, in her seminal work Taking the Wheel, and Margaret Walsh, through her work with The Henry Ford and the University of Michigan-Dearborn, as well as a number of articles focusing on distinct periods in women’s automotive experience, provide historical analyses of the automobile industry and women’s determined struggle to construct a place within it. Deborah Clarke addresses Sanford’s question through an examination of women’s literature in which the automobile assumes an important role. Clarke suggests that women have always considered themselves participants in car culture, but validation and recognition of such a place often eludes them. While Scharff, Walsh and Clarke respond to Sanford’s inquiry through the lens of varying disciplines, each uses the category of gender, and the social construction of masculinity and femininity in relation to the automobile, as the basis of analysis. Each strongly argues that the masculinity built into and associated with automobility has not only influenced auto industry decisions and policy, but has also established impenetrable barriers to woman’s relationship with the car, and woman’s place in car culture.
The automobile was imbued with masculinity from its conception. As the Industrial Revolution assured that man and machine would become irrevocably linked, the automotive industry, the product of that industry and the driver of the product were henceforth labeled masculine. This stalwart and stubborn association of automobile technology with masculinity often postponed or prevented those innovations perceived as feminine. Necessary improvements in comfort, style, luxury, economy and safety were often considered a concession to female tastes and received low priority in automobile production. Scharff provides a number of instances in which notions about gender not only blinded automakers to potential markets for their products, but set industry progress and production back unnecessarily as well. Scharff writes, “what some observers of the 1920s saw as […] a drive toward the decorative in automotive design, others interpreted as the emasculation of both industry men and the cars they made” (Wheel 113). The industry rarely asked women what they desired in a car, as acknowledgement of such responses might infer auto industry feminization. While industry leaders recognized the potential of the female customer, they grappled with how to appeal to the feminine market while keeping the masculinity of the automobile, and those who produced them, intact.
The auto industry responded by calling upon “innate” biological differences to suggest that men and women would “naturally” have different needs and expectations for the automobile. Automakers promoted women’s use of the automobile for its practical applications; thus the car, in women’s possession, became a domestic technology for the performance of prescribed gendered tasks. Unlike male drivers, women were not encouraged to identify with the car; the car was to occupy the same place in women’s lives as the vacuum cleaner and sewing machine. Scharff tells us, “as the automobile industry revolutionized the nation’s geographical, economic and cultural landscape […] it also played no small part in reinscribing assumptions about masculinity and femininity” (Wheel 112). The association of the automobile with masculinity served not only to reinforce the dominance of men’s privileged position in the car, the auto industry and society as a whole, but also affirmed woman’s proper place in public, on the road and in the home. As Scharff asserts, “auto industry decision makers, virtually all male, wanted to believe in the continued dominance and desirability of men’s privileged position in society and in economic matters” (Wheel 116). Thus woman’s “place” in car culture became where those in power wanted her to be: behind the wheel, but only in the fulfillment of her culturally prescribed domestic role.
In Driving Women, Deborah Clarke elaborates on the conflation of the car with the man who drives it. She writes, “more than any other machine, [the car] became anthropomorphized in American culture, generally functioning as both extension of the self and treasured companion” (47). As the car is associated with masculinity, car culture is a male culture. Women’s place in is most often defined in relationship to men and men’s cars. In such contexts, women are often accessories or sexual objects to be controlled or conquered. Women are utilized to enhance or confirm masculinity; their “place” is clearly subservient to that of the car and the man who drives it. As Clarke tells us, “popular myth associates cars with masculinity, and automobile advertising continues to link the car to the female body, promising men control over speed and women” (1). Yet what Sanford suggests and which Clarke confirms is that many women have a relationship with cars that is often comparable in kind and intensity to that expressed by men. Women ascribe meanings to cars; they call on the car’s ability to erase boundaries of home and the domestic sphere, and to provide a sense of independence, freedom and mobility. As Clarke writes, “the car allows women a position from which to construct individual identity, exercise individual agency, and chart a course as acknowledged individuals in American culture” (4). Yet while each of the contributors acknowledges the continuous presence of women in car culture, none offers a suggestion to make women’s presence better known. While Scharff, Walsh and Clarke are unanimous in ascribing importance to women’s participation, “given that cars often determine our place in American society,” not one of them offers a remedy for women’s continued invisibility in the auto industry and in American car culture (Clarke 8).
In “A Woman’s Place in American Car Culture,” Charles Sanford writes, “what is needed is both an intimate feminine viewpoint from several perspectives about women’s experience with cars”(140). Scharff, Walsh and Clarke have provided such insight, but it is not enough. While Clarke calls upon the car as a “vehicle” to examine women’s place, such an analysis does nothing to improve women’s standing in the automotive industry or in car culture. In order to change the mentality of the American car industry, the importance of women to American car culture must become common knowledge. Society has historically underestimated the importance of cars to women. Automakers continue to shape and construct woman’s place in car culture in its own image, persisting in the narrow, like-minded, inbred thinking that has plagued the industry for generations. Women have a place in car culture independent of that prescribed for them. It is up to them to let automakers, and the world, know exactly what it is.
Since this essay was written in 2008, new scholars have approached this topic from various points of view. In Eat My Dust, Georgine Clarsen provides a counterpart to Scharff as she shifts the focus from automakers to female motorists and their efforts to become recognized as competent drivers within early twentieth-century America. Social historian Kathleen Franz dispels the notion of the woman driver as mechanically inept by drawing on accounts of early female motorists involved in the practice of “tinkering” in her book of the same name. Katherine Parkin investigates the gendered ways Americans have purchased, driven, and repaired automobiles since the early twentieth century in Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars. And in my own work, I have investigated women’s participation in various car cultures – chick cars, muscle cars, motorsports, and pickup trucks – as well as examined representations of the woman driver in locations such as popular music and film. These additional twenty-first-century projects have brought more attention to the woman driver; certainly the ascension of Mary Barra to the helm of General Motors has challenged the common assumption that women have little interest or knowledge of cars. But until women are universally recognized as being men’s equal automotive culture, there remains work to be done.
Clarke, Deborah. Driving Women: Fiction and Automobile Culture in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Clarsen, Georgine. Eat My Dust: Early Women Motorists. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2008.
Franz, Kathleen. Tinkering: Consumers Reinvent the Early Automobile. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Parkin, Katherine. Woman at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Sanford, Charles. “‘Woman’s Place’ in American Car Culture.” The Automobile and American Culture. D.L. Lewis & L. Goldstein, eds. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1983. 137-152.
Scharff, Virginia. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
Walsh, Margaret. “At Home at the Wheel? The Woman and her Automobile in the 1950s.” The Third Eccles Centre for American Studies Plenary Lecture: Proceedings of the British Association of American Studies Annual Conference, 2006. The British Library (2007): 1-21.
— “Gender and Automobility: Selling Cars to American Women after the Second World War.” Charm (2009): 295-310.
