While at the Studebaker National Museum for an automotive history conference earlier this month, I had a chance to take a peek at a new special exhibit. Although the space of Five Driven Women is dominated by five magnificent automobiles, the stories of the women who owned and operated them are what, in fact, drives this groundbreaking exhibit. The five featured women originate from a variety of circumstances and called upon the automobile for a myriad of reasons. However, despite differences in wealth, status, opportunity, and fame, each understood the importance of automobility to personal goals, practice, and identity.
Eleanora Sears, represented by a 1912 Simplex Torpedo, was well known for her accomplishments in tennis and equestrian sports. She and her Simplex, gifted to her by none other than Harold S. Vanderbilt, participated in the first national meet of the Vintage Motor Car Club of America, which brought together collectors from all over the country. Louise Arner Boyd – the first woman to lead an expedition to an Arctic archipelago – selected the 1934 Packard Twelve 1108 Custom Convertible Sedan due to its suitability for photography fieldwork. For three months, chauffeur Percy Cameron piloted Boyd and the Packard through Poland and neighboring countries; the resulting photographs – which included Hitler propaganda posters – were incorporated into Boyd’s landmark 1937 publication, Polish Countrysides.
The Schumacher 1928 Hudson Series O Town Car
Aviator Amelia Earhart was well known for her love of cars; auto manufacturers often capitalized on Earhart’s fame to promote their automobiles. However, the 1937 Cord 812 Convertible Phaeton on display at the Studebaker was purchased by Earhart for her own use, no doubt due to its streamlined design and advanced engineering. Classic car enthusiast Margaret Dunning learned to drive at 10 years of age; she maintained her love of cars and driving throughout 103 years of living. Dunning purchased the 1930 Packard 740 Roadster in 1959; she was not only its owner but also performed the routine maintenance herself. Dunning was a great champion of automotive history; the Sloan Museum of Discovery in Flint, Michigan recognizes her many contributions.
Margaret Dunning’s 1930 Packard 740 Roadster
The 1928 Murphy-bodied Hudson on display, attributed to socialite Maribel Schumacher, represents many of the difficulties recovering women’s automotive history. Marriage, divorce, name changes, and the inability of women to purchase automobiles on their own often muddled the archival waters. In Schumacher’s case, verified ownership is further complicated by a daughter who inherited her mother’s first and last name; such inconsistencies in the archival record lead to the question of who, in fact, owned the 1928 Hudson.
The Studebaker National Museum exhibit not only presents the cars and those who drove them but also provides insight into the challenges researching women’s automotive legacies in the early twentieth century. It also touches on how wealth, or lack of it, complicated women’s choices and options in automobile purchase and use. Accompanied by artifacts, news articles, and rarely viewed photographs, Five Driven Women communicates how, despite differences in background and opportunity, early female drivers sought automobility for the opportunity and independence it promised.
This past weekend the Society of Automotive Historians partnered with the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana for Automotive History Live!, two days of lectures from renowned automotive historians focused on a variety of topics from the automotive world. The event was held in conjunction with the museum’s annual Concours d’Elegance at Copshaholm, a celebration of automobiles held on the beautiful grounds of the Copshaholm mansion. This was the first year of the partnership; the SAH helped to recruit speakers from its membership while the Studebaker Museum did most of the heavy lifting. The SAH tech guy in residence, Eric Monterastelli, recorded both days’ proceedings for YouTube viewing. The Friday program included seven presentations, with a wide range of subjects that included automotive mascots, the development of the hydra-matic transmission, 100 years of Bentley, Chrysler’s and Studebaker’s Three Musketeers [Fred Zeder, Owen Skelton, and Carl Breer], and a panel discussion of the Mother Roads – the Lincoln Highway, Route 66, and the Interstate Highway System. The adjoining show grounds featured the Concours d’Lemons, a tongue-in-cheek contest celebrating the un-best of the automotive world. Award categories included “Rust Belt American Junk,” “Most Dangerous,” and Best Back Seat; the judging culminated in the presentation of “Worst of Show.”
Concours d’Lemons
Saturday featured three more presentations in the auditorium while the Concours judging took place on the grand lawn. The lectures celebrated Pontiac’s 100th anniversary, automotive barn finds, and my personal favorite – “She Drives a Duesy”, an engaging exploration of how women and Auburns, Cords, and Duesenbergs intertwined throughout history. I visited the ACD Museum for my women in automotive museum project a couple of years ago. Presenter Madison Auten, who as archivist has provided background for many of the artifacts I reference, should be applauded for her efforts to bring attention to the unrecognized women in automotive history. The day’s events concluded with the pass and review of the Concours award winners. Spectators lined up along the estate’s stone wall to admire the beautiful motor vehicles as they drove slowly by.
Madison Auten and “She Drives a Duesy”
Many SAH members served as judges for the events. As SAH president, I was there to represent the organization and offer support when needed. Blessed with good weather, the weekend events were well organized, well attended, and offered something for everyone. Folks with a two-day ticket could visit both the Studebaker and History museums, attend the lectures, tour the Copshaholm mansion, and walk among the best and un-best automobiles on display. It was a great experience for anyone interested in automotive history; I was honored to be a small part of such an educational, accessible, and exceptional event.
Since I began talking with women about their cars more than a decade ago, I’ve collected countless automotive stories. What has struck me most is how widely those stories vary, reflecting not only the women who owned the vehicles but also the types of cars they drove. The stories attached to classic muscle cars, as I noted in an earlier post, tend to be nostalgic. Many of the women I interviewed associated these cars with a significant person, a memorable event, or a cherished moment from the past. Stories about contemporary cars, by contrast, focus less on nostalgia and more on the role the vehicle plays in everyday life. In conversations with chick car owners, most women spoke about what the car enabled them to do, how it made them feel, and how it expressed their personal identity.
Adventure in a New Beetle
The chick car – a term that became popular during the early 2000s – was in many ways a response to the vehicle historically associated with the woman driver. Sturdy, spacious, and utilitarian, the “women’s car” – the ubiquitous station wagon of the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970 hatchback sedan, the popular minivan introduced in the late 1980s, and today’s downsized SUV and crossover – was recognized as the perfect vehicle for carrying kids and cargo.
Ready for a twisty ride
However, in the late 1990s, a new type of female driver emerged. She appeared in many guises: as a young single woman making her way in the world, a married professional focused on career, or middle-aged empty nester looking forward to a more independent life. Seeking to shed their domestic identities, whether temporarily or permanently, these women embraced a car that was in no way utilitarian, but rather, small, quick, stylish, and “fun.” This vehicle became branded in many automotive circles as the “chick car.” The most common cars in this category were the Miata, MINI, and VW New Beetle.
Autocross in a Miata
When chick car owners tell stories, they are accompanied not by nostalgia, but by joy. The small, nimble cars provide automotive experiences that cannot be duplicated by a heavy, cumbersome, and practical automobile. Many of the car stories related to me told of automotive adventures: road trips in which the journey – not the destination – was the point. The chick car owners often spoke of the pleasure and excitement of navigating “twisty, fun roads” in new and exciting places, often with organizations composed of similar-minded auto aficionados. As a 49-year-old human resources officer remarked of her participation in the “Italian Job” run in Venice, California, “It’s just so much fun. I’m giggling the whole time.” Rather than calling on the automobile solely for the performance of everyday tasks on suburban thoroughfares, chick car drivers find exhilarating new uses on country highways, scenic byways, and a multitude of “curvy mountain roads.” Many of the women spoke of driving the Tail of the Dragon, a legendary 11-mile stretch located at Deals Gap on the Tennessee – North Carolina border. Famous for its challenging driving experiences, the road features dramatic switchbacks, tight curves, and steep embankments with no intersecting roads or driveways. Unaccustomed to thinking of the automobile as a road machine, many women mentioned how they enjoyed preserving these new driving moments through journals, scrapbooking, and online photo albums. A 53-year old accountant, who keeps a photo of her first drive through the Dragon as computer wallpaper, remarked, “In the picture, I’m coming out of one curve, setting up for the next, and you can see a third curve in the distance. I have the top down, I’m wearing a fun hat, and you can my eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. A really cool picture.”
MINI parade
Although many told stories of driving trips and tours, some found pleasure in creating stories in which the car was the star. Because the chick is car is small, stylish, and unusual, the women who own them are continually thinking of new, imaginative, and fun uses for their respective Miatas, MINIs, and New Beetles. A 55-year-old community service officer created a photo book for her 2004 Mini Cooper. Armed with a tin of chocolate chip cookies as a “reward” for participation, she and a friend would drive aimlessly “looking for interesting places to take pictures of my car.” Some the photos included: ready to be scooped-up by a back hoe, parked next to a helicopter, in a firehouse, next to a fire truck, in a restricted area military bunker (with a helicopter escort), ready to be clobbered by Western Exterminator’s “Little Man” (Western Exterminators added this picture to their employee newsletter), on a nude beach, with bathing suits hanging from the car door, with Verizon Wireless’s “Can you hear me now” guy, looking very tiny next to a live elephant, and being driven by the Chick-fil-a cow (which broke the driver’s seat). A 58-year-old technical writer “did the trick photography that every single person got into the back seat of the MINI. And the last guy, he was six foot seven, got into the passenger seat and I opened the sunroof and his head was sticking up out of it.” A 45-year-old tech teacher awarded “Bertha” – her 2011 Mini – with its own Facebook page.
Fun with a MINI
Ownership of a chick car is accompanied by experiences many women never thought possible. The stories the women tell are filled with humor, exhilaration, freedom, and fun. They disrupt the popular image of the woman driver, from one who is dutiful, serious, and cautious, to an individual who is carefree, adventurous, creative, and ultimately empowered. To the women who own them, the chick car is not merely transportation. It is transformative.
Auto writer Logan Carter recently asked Jalopnik readers to share their most expensive automotive mistakes. He confessed that his own was purchasing his first car from a “sketchy dude” from Craigslist, only for everything to go wrong the moment the 2005 Saab cabriolet was parked in his driveway. The reader responses ranged from tales of purchasing a beater with the intention to fix it up, trusting cheap mechanics, deciding to invest in questionable upgrades on a perfectly serviceable daily driver, and “thinking I could afford that new 1985 Pontiac Fiero on my measly paycheck.” The last story hit close to home, as I found myself in a similar situation when I purchased a hot little convertible based on an attempt at coolness coupled with a rather embarrassing misunderstanding of a potential pay raise [more on that later].
My story of woe goes as follows. I had recently started my first job in advertising. I drove to work in a rusted out, 11-year-old VW Beetle that had been my trusty college commuter car. One day returning from work I discovered all of the spots in my apartment were taken; consequently, I parked my car on a Detroit street. When I went out to get in the car for work the next morning, the car was completely totaled, due to an errant [and nowhere to be found] driver. Although I got nearly half of what I paid for the VW from the insurance company, the amount was worth a lot less in the 11 year since I had purchased the car.
Faced with a conundrum of what to buy, I looked around at my co-workers’ rides. I was ultimately smitten with that of my supervisor [who happened to be Cathy Guisewite, not yet rich and famous for her self-titled comic strip], a 1975 Fiat Spider convertible in black. Having just received what I thought was a substantial raise, and wanting to emulate my cool and successful boss, I purchased the same car in fiery red. Soon afterward the troubles began.
First of all, I couldn’t afford it. When I was told by my supervisors I was “getting sixteen”, I assumed it meant my salary was being raised from ten grand to $16000 a year [which seemed like a lot to me in 1976]. Alas, what was meant was that I was receiving an additional $1600 a year, which raised my yearly salary to a whopping $11600. Those car payments were painful right from the start.
Secondly, Fiats at that time were not known for their dependability. The politically incorrect phrase attached to FIAT was “Fix It Again Tony,” intended to poke fun at the unreliability of the Italian car brand. So not only was I making significant car payments, but the car’s frequent appearances at the repair shop caused me to go into significant debt.
Finally, a convertible makes absolutely no sense in Michigan. Although I enjoyed the ease at which the top lowered [I could do it at a stoplight], the joy of wind in my hair could only be enjoyed for 3 or 4 months a year. In the winter, the car’s rear wheel drive and lowered stance made driving on snowy roads a considerable challenge. And as I didn’t have a garage, the cloth top experienced some wear and tear.
At some point, I realized my mistake and traded in the Fiat for a VW Scirocco, which continued my [interrupted] love affair with the German car maker. Proof of my dislike as well as embarrassment of the Fiat is that I never took a photo of the car or of myself driving it. The only good news is that I learned both financially and personally from my costly and rather embarrassing car-buying mistake. Although over the past 50 years I have enjoyed some vehicles more than others, I never regretted a car purchase as much as that of the 1976 Fiat Spider convertible.
In much of my work I collect women’s car stories. I’ve spent many hours interviewing women who had much to say about their relationship with cars. I’ve talked to women with chick cars, muscle cars, and pickup trucks. I’ve met with women who engage in motorsports, as well as women in their 80s and 90s to reflect on early car experiences. Although the themes that emerged from these various projects made their way into journal articles and books, the particular experiences of each woman are often limited to a quote or two. I thought, therefore, that it might be worthwhile to go back and revisit the interviews and unearth some of the stories that deserve to be told.
One of the first group of women I spoke with were those that own classic muscle cars. The original American muscle car – a two-door, rear-wheel-drive, midsize vehicle equipped with a large muscular V8 engine and sold at an affordable price – was produced between 1964 and 1973 to appeal specifically to an affluent young male market. Because this car culture is so intertwined with masculinity and the male driver, I was interested not only in how the women negotiated their way into this masculine fraternity, but more importantly, hoped to uncover exactly what the powerful cars meant to the women who drive them. The overwhelming majority of female muscle car owners were of the baby boomer generation. Some of the women participated in muscle car culture alongside husbands, but others went it alone, often after the passing of a male companion or family member. Here are two of their stories.
In Minnesota for a family wedding, I happened upon a muscle car show outside of Minneapolis. One of the cars that caught my attention was a bright purple [Plum Crazy] 1970 Dodge Challenger. I was especially intrigued by the album set next to the car; it included not only restoration photos but also contained a faded photo from the 1970s of a young blonde woman in a bathing suit posing next to the car. As it turned out, the woman sitting next to the Challenger at the car show was the original owner. As a teenager fresh out of high school working her first job, Jenny Brinker-Wagstrom was driving a 1957 Chevy that kept breaking down. Needing something more dependable for work transportation, she spotted an advertisement that featured a young blonde woman next to a 1970 Challenger. Jenny went to the dealership and ordered a car exactly like that pictured in the photograph, not understanding what exactly she was buying.
Jenny came from a family of 10 children. Her strict Catholic father accompanied his daughter to the dealership to pick up the car. As she told me, “I heard the car coming from around the building and all I could hear was this loud ‘jib, jib, jib, jib’ really loud, and I thought, oh my god, my dad’s going to kill me. There’s no way. Here comes my Challenger. A guy brought it around for me, he gets out, hands me the keys and says ‘man, you’re one lucky young lady.’ And I thought you don’t know my father, you just don’t know my father. And I looked up at my dad, he looked at me, and he looked at [the dealer] and he said, ‘find another car. There’s no way my daughter’s driving this car.’ And of course the tears welled up in my eyes. And I, you know my father, you can’t talk to him, once he’s made up his mind you know.”
Jenny looked hopelessly at the dealer, who somewhat miraculously, talked her father into acquiescing to his daughter’s wishes. As she recalled, “I didn’t say anything; I just stood there holding my keys. I wouldn’t give my keys up. I was only like what, 20 at the time. And I thought nope, nope, no one’s taking my car. This is my car; I fell in love with her right away you know.”
The Challenger became Jenny’s daily driver for many years. She drove it to work, for running around with her girlfriends, and was often challenged to race by boys on the street. But the Minnesota winters eventually took a toll on the car; although it was no longer drivable, she could not part with it. As she told me, as one of 10 siblings, she had to share everything. Jenny has kept the now restored Challenger all of these years because, as she exclaimed, “it was the only thing I’ve ever owned that I paid for. And just the fact that I fell in love with her.”
Sharyl Sharrow’s 1970 Ford Mustang has a sentimental history. On a trip to Tennessee, her husband and son found the car in a field behind a barn. They trailered it home, and worked on it when they could over the next 15 years. As she told me, “when you have children there’s things that come before your toys.” Once the kids were set in college, she and her husband began working on the car together. They took it apart; every screw, and every bolt were removed and put it in bags. As she recalled, “we pretty much took everything apart and we had parts stored in the basement, the engine hanging on a block in the garage, and tires underneath my basement steps wrapped in blankets.” But shortly after dismantling the Mustang, Sharyl’s husband became seriously ill and could no longer work on it. However, her husband’s friends from the car club took it upon themselves to finish the project. While her husband was in hospice, about four weeks before he passed, the restored car was placed on the front lawn. As she reminisced, “he cried when they pulled it in; he was so happy.”
Since her husband’s passing, Sharyl has driven the Mustang to car shows as a tribute to her husband’s memory. As she said to me, “Oh it was my husband’s dream car. [Before he passed] he made me promise him I would take it out. So I do it, and I do it grumbling. It can put a smile to my face or it can bring a tear to my eye. You know it’s just, it’s that bittersweet. I would love to have him back in the driver’s seat of it.”
“Every car has a story” is a popular sentiment among automotive enthusiasts. It speaks of the personal, cultural, and historical meanings automobiles carry to those who owned them. In their encounters with cars, individuals often create narratives that combine memory, feeling, and life experience; they generate stories that “integrate their past, present, and future […].”[1] Traditionally, storytellers in these locations have been male; since the early years of automotive history, men’s car stories have been a popular subject of books, film, and magazines.[2] In the twenty-first century, men’s automotive narratives are often found in locations such as car TV, podcasts, online blogs and forums, automotive websites, and digital newsletters. In these masculine settings, women’s unique relationship with cars, and the stories attached to them, are often ignored or considered invalid. In her collection of essays by women writers on cars and the road, Elinor Nauen exclaims, “women have always driven and owned cars – and always fought with men who thought we shouldn’t.”[3]
As tourism scholar Lee Jolliffee argues, culture related to cars “includes not only the cars but also documentation and expression of related histories,” both written and oral.[4] Because women’s relationship with cars differs from that of men, women’s car stories – such as those mentioned here – add a new dimension to the common narrative and provide automotive histories that are otherwise unrecorded. As Marilyn Root – in her compilation of women’s car stories – declares, “for many women the stories of their relationships with their vehicles are not only those of transportation, but of transformation.”[5]
[1] Nicolette Caperello and Kenneth S. Kurani. “Households’ Stories of Their Encounters With a Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle.” Environment and Behavior 44(4) 2012, 504.
[2] Examples include Car Club Memories: Personal Stories from Three Dynamic Decades of Cruisin’, Competition, and Cool Cars compiled by Fred Thomas; Ambrosio and Luckerman’s Cruisin’ the Original: Woodward Avenue; Gone in Sixty Seconds; Vanishing Point;Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.
[3] Elinor Nauen, ed. Ladies Start Your Engines: Women Writers on Cars and the Road (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996), xvi.
[4] Lee Jollife. “The Bricklin: From Automobile to Place Narrative.” Automotive Heritage and Tourism: A Framework for Study, Michael V. Conlin and Lee Jolliffe, eds. (London, Routledge, 2017), 41.
[5] Marilyn Root. Women at the Wheel 42 Stories of Freedom, Fanbelts, and the Lure of the Open Road (Naperville IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.), 3.
In a recent New York Times opinion feature, filmmaker Eve Van Dyke reflects on her own family car accident to explore the inequities in car design that negatively affect women. The realization that she and her boyfriend’s mother sustained more severe injuries than the men in the car prompted her investigation into gender bias in automotive safety design. In ‘Buckle Up, Cars Still Aren’t Built for You,’ Van Dyke argues that modern automobile safety systems continue to prioritize male bodies, leaving women disproportionately vulnerable in crashes.
For decades, notes Van Dyke, crash-test standards have relied almost exclusively on dummies modeled after the ‘average’ male body. Although some car manufacturers claim to use female dummies in testing, those models are most often scaled down versions of male bodies – often mimicking that of a 12-year-old boy – that do not reflect the distinct differences in women’s anatomy, muscle distribution, bone density, and seating posture. As a result, women in the United States are significantly more likely to suffer severe injury or death in comparable crashes.
Estimated increase of risk for moderate injuries in a car crash compared to a male driver or right front passenger of the same age. From Consumer Reports
This problem, Van Dyke asserts, exists within a broader history of systems and technologies designed around male norms. For the past century, despite women constituting over 50% of car buyers and drivers, the automotive industry has treated male physiology as the default standard. The tendency to use the male body as the norm is not limited to automotive; for years medicine, engineering, and industrial design have maintained similar practices. [Until the late 1980s, for example, cardiovascular clinical trials almost exclusively used male subjects, meaning that heart disease symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments were largely based only on men.]
As someone who worked in the periphery of the auto industry, the refusal to consider female anatomy in automotive design was not news to me. It was also not a surprise to those who posted in the article’s comment section; women, particularly those of short stature like myself, spoke of the lifetime difficulties they have encountered adjusting cars to fit their small frames. As the majority of responders noted, the positioning of seatbelts, headrests, and steering wheels in American automobiles makes it almost impossible for a woman to sit comfortably and safely in the driver’s seat. As one contributor wrote, “I’ve often thought about this issue as my head’s point of impact against the headrest – no matter how I adjust it – is somehow so high that I’m sure my neck would break if I was ever rear ended.” Another exclaimed, “my particular nemesis is the seatbelt that crosses so close to your neck. I’m 5’2”. I’ve spent years driving/riding with one hand holding my seatbelt so it’s not against my neck.” These concerns mirror my own. In most cars the headrest, even at its lowest point, is too high to be effective; consequently I sit forward rather than rest my head against it. And I recall that when harness seatbelts were introduced, I spent the first few years after refusing to use them as the position of the top strap nearly choked me. One of the solutions the women mention, which I have written about previously, is to purchase a car that simply fits better. Women were the first to switch to Japanese imports for this reason; I myself have always found small German cars to be more suitable to my short body.
Thor 5-F
Although Van Dyke calls attention to ongoing efforts to improve safety testing, including the development of more sophisticated female crash-test dummies [such as the Thor 5-F], and legislative proposals such as the She Drives Act, car companies have been slow to respond. And even though the head of NHTSA [National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration] gave his support for the Thor 5-F, as of March 2026 there has been no deadline for implementation established, nor has there been any tangible action taken to incorporate such changes. Autoblog recently reported that some car manufacturers are deliberately settling for lower safety ratings in order to keep costs down, which is certainly a factor in the reluctance to implement increased safety measures for female drivers. Consequently, the standard for crash-test dummies, and automotive safety, remains disadvantageous, if not dangerous, for women behind the wheel.
Van Dyke is wise to bring attention to this matter. As she notes, automotive safety is both a technological and social justice issue; consequently, women’s bodies should not be treated as secondary in transportation design. This NYT story – as well as automotive accident and fatality statistics – demonstrate that car safety inequities are not accidental, but are the product of historical design choices and regulatory neglect. As the auto industry and the government seem to be unresponsive to this issue, it falls to those most affected by gender inequities in automotive safety – namely women – to influence change through advocacy, research, leadership, consumer pressure, and public engagement. Women are not dummies. They directly purchase over 60% of new vehicles in the US and influence over 85% of car buying decisions. It’s past time to consider women’s lives in the design of automobiles.
In a recent Jalopnikarticle, auto journalist Michael Sullivan bemoaned the recent closings of several prominent automotive museums. Sean Mathis, author of a weekly automotive museum guide, also discussed the number of auto museums – over 50 – that have been forced to shutter over the past few years. Both sources cite many of the same circumstances that compel an auto museum to close its doors. The first is the death of the museum’s founder. Museums that begin as an individual’s personal collection often have few provisions once the owner passes; consequently, the automobiles are donated to other museums or sold off. In addition, many museums are still feeling the consequences of the pandemic; cars and museum space still needed to be maintained despite the absence of paying visitors, emptying the bank account of more than one institution. However, after visiting 25 museums in preparation for my current project, I have come to the conclusion that there is another cause for closure that is not often addressed. And that is the inability of many automotive museums to adapt to a changing and more diverse visitor base.
Walter P. Chrysler Museum, closed in 2012
The museums that close are often those that display cars and not much else. They were originally developed to appeal to a specific customer, a white, male gearhead who spent his youth wrenching on and driving fast cars. For men of this generation, the cars were enough. Rows and rows of automobiles, accompanied only by specs and a little history, satisfied the man who could create his own stories about the vehicles on display. However, today’s youth does not have same connection to cars as their predecessors. A placard full of vehicle statistics holds little appeal. Without relevance to their own lives, the auto museum becomes a place that perhaps holds their father’s memories, but not their own. As a large proportion of car museum visitors are middle-aged or over, their numbers will not be replaced by young men as their population dwindles.
Kids interactive display – Sloan Museum of Discovery
I recently attended the National Association of Automobile Museums [NAAM] annual conference, and many of the presentations addressed the issue of how to make automobile museums more appealing to the non-car enthusiast, particularly to members of under-represented groups. An interesting statistic mentioned was one focused on female museum visitors. In terms of general museums, women outnumber male visitors by a large margin, approximately 62% female to 38% male. However automobile museums are a notable exception, where men make up nearly 66% of visitors. While women now purchase nearly half of new cars in the US, and hold the majority of driver’s licenses, their historical representation in museum narratives has been limited, leading to a visitor base that heavily favors [oldish] men. As noted by Motorious writer Steven Symes, “most car museums cater to older folk and they do so with zero apologies. […] By appealing to a narrow demographic, they’re actually hurting themselves.” The continuing closing of automobile museums would certainly substantiate this sentiment.
Chicana lowriders – California Automobile Museum
But fortunately, museum practices are beginning to change. Auto museums that expand beyond cars to include the social influences of the automobile are more likely to attract a more diversified visitor base. These museums have successfully implemented strategies to expand their audiences by moving beyond traditional mechanical displays to focus on culture, families, and historically underrepresented narratives. By incorporating exhibits that appeal to women, kids, minority groups and other non-old-white-male populations, museums not only have a better chance of survival, but can – most importantly – assure that auto history isn’t lost to future generations. Replacing endless lists of automotive statistics with car stories and histories that have relevance to all visitors, and incorporating docents and guides who are younger and not-always-male could go a long way to attracting a more engaged visitor base.
She Drives exhibit – Automotive Hall of Fame
It is certainly disheartening to witness the closing of so many longstanding automobile museums across the US. But perhaps the era of traditional car museums will eventually be replaced by institutions that serve not just a particular segment of car geeks, but all drivers and lovers of automobiles.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 2026 National Association of Automotive Museums [NAAM] Annual Conference and Awards Banquet at America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Given my research interests, I had originally planned to attend one day to attend a session on women in motorsports. However, as president of the Society of Automotive Historians, I was invited by the Packard director Rob Signom to attend the entire conference. It turned out to be a great experience as I sat in on many informative sessions, networked with folks from the transportation museum community, received some inspiration for my book manuscript, took part in field trips to a number of transportation-related museums and sites, as well as having the opportunity to spread the word about the SAH.
Social Media Presentation [photo courtesy of Sean Matthis]
The four days were jammed-packed with activities. The sessions covered topics such as using social media to engage and attract younger museum audiences, obtaining grants to fund special programs and incentives, achieving best practices for archival accumulation and storage, the challenges of creating changing and relevant exhibits with automobiles, as well as the aforementioned session that focused on incorporating women’s motorsports into museum exhibits. Field trips to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Carillon Historical Park, Champaign Aviation Museum, personal automotive collections, and an experiential environments design firm were also part of the conference.
Thursday evening featured the presentation of NAAMY Awards, which honor achievements in curation, education, marketing, and collections management in nonprofit transportation museums across North America. During one evening a group of attendees [including my baseball-loving self] had the opportunity to attend a Dayton Dragons minor league ballgame, which was a complete blast.
From the Champaign Aviation Museum
Although I find social situations to be quite stressful, the NAAM folks were welcoming, helpful, and engaging. I was struck by the atmosphere of cooperation; all were eager to share information, artifacts, and resources with others. Not only did I personally connect with archivists willing to help with my book project, but I believe my attendance and participation will help strengthen the important relationship between the SAH and NAAM. And the baseball game was pretty awesome, too.
We all have a car story. As the newly elected president of the Society of Automotive Historians, I was asked to share mine. Here’s what I wrote:
Over the past 50+ years, newly elected SAH presidents have used the opportunity of the SAH Journal ‘President’s Perspective’ to introduce themselves to the SAH membership. As I looked over past Journal issues in preparation for this task, I was, frankly, very much overwhelmed by the wealth of automotive knowledge and experience shared by past presidents over the years. I am honored and somewhat intimidated to follow such a respected and accomplished group of automotive historians.
My freshly washed 1970 VW Beetle. At $2293 out the door, its only options were a radio and crank sunroof.
As for my own automotive history, I was born in Detroit. My maternal grandfather was one of thousands of Polish immigrants who came to this country in the early twentieth century for employment in the auto factories; he spent the most of his life working on the line at the Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck. My mother, as was the practice of immigrant families at the time, never learned to drive. Consequently, when my father died unexpectedly when I was nine, we were without a car until my brother turned 16 four years later. We went through a series of sibling-shared automobiles; I learned to drive on a used 1960 Corvair [three-on-the-floor] followed by a 1964 Tempest [three-on-the-tree]. My instructors were my oldest brother, a Detroit police officer, who patiently accompanied me as I ground gears driving around a local high school parking lot, and my brother-in-law, who let me practice shifting on his Falcon family station wagon. On my twenty-first birthday I purchased my first car, a brand new 1970 Volkswagen Beetle, the vehicle of choice for financially strapped Wayne State University commuters like me. That red Bug began a lifelong love affair with German automobiles, which have included two Beetles, two Audis, a Scirocco, a Rabbit, a GTI, and two Golf Rs.
A much younger me pictured on the right, shooting a commercial for the Buick Regal in 1982.
Thus, unlike my predecessors, I came to the SAH by a rather unconventional route. I did not grow up with an interest in cars; I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of automobiles; I do not have a background in the history of anything, much less automotive history. My interest in the automobile, in fact, came simply by chance. When I entered graduate school after a career in advertising, while enrolled in a class titled ‘Gender, Technology, and Pop Culture,’ I discovered that the subject of women and cars had not received much attention in scholarship. As I was looking for my academic ‘niche,’ I decided that my Motor City upbringing, coupled with my experience writing car commercials, could serve as the foundation for this new direction. I started writing and publishing journal articles and attending academic conferences to receive feedback on my work. It was at one of these conferences, put on by the Popular Culture Association, that I met Carla Lesh, who suggested I join the Society of Automotive Historians. The rest, as they say, is [automotive] history.
My PhD dissertation committee, after my successful defense of “Have You Heard the One About the Woman Driver: Chicks, Muscle, Pickups, and the Reimagining of the Woman Behind the Wheel”
As I met more people in the SAH, at conferences and through my local Leland Chapter, I decided I wanted to become more involved in the organization. Once again, Carla served as an impetus, convincing me to run for the board. Although it took me two tries to succeed, once elected I quickly took on whatever was asked of me. Painfully shy, I preferred to work behind the scenes, chairing the Awards Committee, Brick and Mortar Working Group, and serving on the Brigham Awards Panel. After conducting research at the IMRRC and presenting at Watkins Glen, I also became involved in Argetsinger Symposium planning. When asked to run for Vice President, I initially refused, believing I did not have the temperament nor automotive provenance to serve. However, after persistence from a few longtime members [you know who you are], I decided to give it a shot, which eventually led to my election as SAH president. So here I am.
Now that I am in office, I am fortunate to have fellow officers and a board of directors eager to take on the formidable task of moving the SAH forward – perhaps kicking and screaming – into the twenty-first century. As a team we endeavor to make the SAH more accessible, to provide timely communications, and to encourage member participation. In addition, our hope is to expand the SAH’s reach, to welcome those – much like me – outside the traditional confines of ‘automotive historian.’
In my role as Awards Chair, presenting at the SAH annual banquet
Since taking office in October, a monthly newsletter has been instituted, and an Executive Committee has been formed to address pressing SAH issues. Future objectives for the organization include restructuring the publications committee to accommodate new media as well as to develop a timely and attainable publication schedule, establishing a finance committee to oversee the organization’s financial health, planning, and accountability, and to begin the transition of SAH publications to digital. In addition to the Awards Banquet and Hershey in the fall, there are also plans in the works to co-sponsor a seminar in conjunction with the Studebaker National Museum 2026 Concours d’Elegance at Copshaholm weekend this summer.
As I begin my term, I want to express my appreciation to the membership for entrusting me with the leadership of this organization. And lest I forget, thank you especially to Carla Lesh, as well as all the others who have supported and encouraged me to become a part of the Society of Automotive Historians.
A recent Jalopnik article asked its readers, “What’s the Most Hot Girl Car?” I couldn’t help but wonder what, exactly, was the answer this query was looking for. Was Jalopnik trying to determine what car, when driven by a woman, qualifies her as ‘hot?’ Or was it, in fact, requesting its readers to name the hottest car among female drivers?
Jalopnik writer Amber DaSilva’s hot girl car
Historically, the auto industry has featured advertising which features a ‘hot’ women posed next to a vehicle as a means to lure the male consumer. The implication is that driving such a car will attract the type of sexy woman a man couldn’t win over on his own. The measure of a car’s hotness can also be determined by the nature of the woman who drives it. For example, a 2007 Cadillac GTS commercial featuring Kate Walsh famously asked, ‘when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?’ The question equated the thrill of driving a Cadillac to that of a sexual encounter with a beautiful woman. In each of these representations, women’s assumed preference for a particular automobile marked the woman, and the car with which she was associated, as ‘hot’.
Asking the readers to name the hottest car among female drivers, on the other hand, was a question that could be answered by looking at marketing studies that ranked car purchases by gender. It didn’t seem like the kind of request a magazine that caters to a young and often skeptical demographic that prefers an irreverent, humorous, and often critical take on the automotive industry would, in fact, make.
1990s Golf Cabriolet
As neither of these answers seemed to suffice, I relied on ChatGPT, the preferred research instrument of the auto site’s target audience: young adults, the majority male, under 30 years of age. When I posed the question, ‘what is a hot girl car?’ to the popular AI tool, the answer wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
According to the collected sources, a hot girl car is an informal, often humorous, slang term to describe a vehicle that exudes a fun, stylish, or confident vibe, frequently associated with trendy, independent, or unapologetically stylish young women. The term is not presented in a derogatory manner; rather, it lists the traits of the hot girl car as stylish or cute, compact or sporty, well-kept or accessorized, and associated with urban, fashion-forward, or lifestyle branding. A hot girl car exudes confidence, elan, or a ‘let’s go on an adventure’ attitude. The vehicles most often associated with this label are the Mazda Miata, Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, VW Beetle, or for the adventurous types, the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco Sport.
The ultimate chick/hot girl car – Mazda Miata
What struck me about this answer was its similarity to the definition of the ‘chick car,’ a term that became popular during the early 2000s. In an article published in 2012, I described the chick car as a type of vehicle favored by women that was small, quick, stylish, and fun to drive. Unlike the hot girl car, however, the chick car was considered inferior by the male contingent for its association with the woman driver. As I wrote, ‘Women’s attraction to a particular automobile causes members of the male population to question the car’s technology. […] The assumption that women lack technical expertise creates a reverse kind of logic in the minds of many male consumers. They believe that since women cannot appreciate the finer technical characteristics of a car, such as power, handling, and performance, the cars women purchase must be technologically deficient. Women’s approval, in the minds of many men, leads to the devaluation of the car.’[1] The male constituency of auto makers, journalists of that time often disparaged the chick car, referring to it as “the kind of car no manly man would be caught dead driving.”[2]
Ford Bronco Sport, for the adventurous hot girl
However, based on the Jalopnik article responses, that sentiment has evolved. The author of the article, Amber DaSilva, invited her readers to ‘think up your definition of a hot girl, and pair that girl with the car that fits her best. What’s the most hot girl car you can buy?’ Many of the vehicles I defined as chick cars – Beetles, Minis, Miatas, and Golf Cabriolets – were included as bona fide hot girl cars. Jeeps, classic muscle cars, and anything-with-a-stick-shift also made the list. And although the majority of responders were male, they were not regarding the car choices, or the women who made them, in a pejorative way. Rather, they were admiring the women for their automotive preferences; i.e. the choice in itself awarded some hotness. Granted, the readership of Jalopnik skews more left than the majority of car magazines, but I found it encouraging to see that most of posters – while having a little fun – did not disrespect young female drivers. And as the writer defined herself as a hot girl herself, the question – and the responses – were all made it a lighthearted, convivial manner.
Mini Cooper
As I noted over a decade ago, despite the attempts of male journalists and drivers to disparage the chick car, women embraced the category and made it their own. As I asserted, ‘to the women who drive them, the chick car represents personal freedom, independence, agency, and a whole lot of fun.’[3]It is heartening to know that young people today – men and women alike – embrace the chick/hot girl car a means to adventure, identity, and empowerment.
[1] Chris Lezotte. “The Evolution of the ‘Chick Car’: Which Came First, the Chick or the Car?” The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 45 No 3 2012, 525.
[2] Quote from John McElroy, host of Autoline Detroit.
