Pink Cars & Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way into the Driver's Seat" by Jessica Brockmole

Chrysler released a special edition of the Dodge Royal Lancer that Chrysler in 1955 called LaFemme. Marketed as “a car for the modern woman,” the model offered a pink-and-white color scheme along with matching accessories. There was only one problem: women didn’t buy it. Chrysler soon dropped the concept due to low sales.

That’s just one of the examples that Jessica Brockmole details in her book, Pink Cars and Pocketbooks, a study of U.S. auto industry efforts to win over female customers through the 20th century.

Brockmole points out that women were a factor in the acceptance of the automobile in America—almost from the start of the 20th century. Pictured in the book is a 1903 advertisement for Oldsmobile with a headline, “Good Bye, Horse.” A lady driver is shown waving goodbye to a faithful steed standing behind a fence. “Any lady who understands a sewing machine can drive this graceful Runabout,” notes the ad copy.

While automotive history traditionally followed a male orientation with an emphasis on speed and power, women were on the scene, noted Brockmole. “The percentage of driver’s licenses issued to women tripled between 1922 and 1931. Among the consumer homes surveyed, women were driving in over half and, in many of those households, more than one woman drove the family car,” she stated.

In a 1935 study, women made up one-third of U.S. drivers on the road but their “sphere of influence” impacted two-thirds of all car sales, said Brockmole.

Women, used to the vagaries of the fashion industry, weren’t taken aback when Alfred Sloan of General Motors transformed the automotive industry with the concept of planned obsolescence, the launching of “new” car models annually, she said. The idea of making minor design adjustments while offering color and ornamental changes brought car companies into the realm of fashion, the author noted.

Style became substance as industrial designers like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes were hired by automakers. Brockmole said Dorothy Dignam, an ad executive with the Philadelphia ad agency, N.W. Ayer & Son, helped Ford Motor Co. understand that lines were everything in the 1930s. Dignam outlined ways Ford could promote new models to women concerned with line, style, and appearance, said Brockmole.

In the 1950s, Charlotte Montgomery wrote a column in Good Housekeeping called “Woman and Her Car,” expressing the viewpoint that women were interested in automotive fundamentals, not just a car to match a spring outfit, the author noted.

Brockmole cited Ms. Magazine as an example of promoting a new spirit for women in the 1970s. A woman’s place was no longer solely in the home as working women grew in number and stature, she said. Other periodicals followed providing specific information to women about cars.

A study of the relationship between women and the auto industry is a story with a happy ending, noted Brockmole, adding: “Despite women’s messy history with the automobile, they have claimed the knowledge, the voice, and the confidence to define that relationship for themselves.”