Despite decades of Women's Lib (now refashioned or out of fashion, to both genders' great relief) our psyches are still deeply chauvinist, especially when it comes to things professional, or demandingly physical, or technical. Or car. But that is changing.
For its first century, the only concession car manufacturers made to women was a vanity mirror on the sun visor...
on the passenger side. Their first attempts at a complete woman's car were simply "ordinary" cars with less of everything - less size, less space, less power, less style. He is sitting with a 2-litre GTi engine.
..in a city centre traffic jam; his five-seater is carrying.
..only him; and his spacious boot is loaded with.
..a briefcase.
Her car, more accurately described as a motorised shopping trolley or a lawnmower with a lid, is screaming its tiny heart out on more open suburban roads, its four little seats are carrying half the school's Under-10 football team, and the dinky boot is loaded with a baby's push chair, the weekly shopping, a bicycle that needs to be taken for repair, and a potted plant. And even though He's the one with the burly physique who is supposed to know something about auto mechanics, His car is newer and has almost no chance of breaking down and leaving Him stranded in the dark. She, who is supposed to be feeble and vulnerable and sterotypically doesn't even know where the bonnet latch is, drives the older model held together by little more than the children's chewing gum and half-melted ch.
