Chick Cars

When Fiat announced its re-entry into the U.S. market with the teeny revamped 500 model a few years back, their ad campaign was unashamedly aimed at the female car buyer, the theme being:  “The Italians Are Coming!”  It was a brilliant piece of positioning, because the small car / indifferent performance / cute factor was never going to attract too many heterosexual or non-metrosexual men.  And it wasn’t the first time Fiat had gone down that road, so to speak:

…which led to this:

VW, of course, had used the same positioning with their relaunch of the revamped (and awful) Bug — less overtly, but with the standard accessory of that cutesy little single-stem flower holder on the dashboard, the target market was quite obvious.

Marketing aside, however, quite a few cars have always appeared to me to be perfect “ladies’ cars”, as much for their petite-ness as for anything else.  Here’s the Lancia Fulvia of the late 1960s:

Even the Mercedes 230 SL of the same era was, I think, positioned in the same niche:

Both had engines that were respectable enough — for sure, neither was underpowered — but the cars were definitely not hot rods, by any stretch of the imagination.  My mother always dreamed of having a “pagoda top” (never happened, sadly — she had to suffer with an Austin Healey 3000 instead), and even New Wife, on seeing a beautifully-restored 230 SL poodling around Plano, was impressed enough to comment.

The difference between the two eras, by the way, is that in the so-called “pre-feminist” era of the early 1960s, neither the Fulvia nor the 230 SL were ever overtly marketed at women.  Whether it was because, in those days, men made the car purchase decisions on behalf of their wives or daughters, or whether the car manufacturers’ marketing departments didn’t want to risk alienating potential male customers by positioning those models as “chick cars”, I have no idea.

Of course, the modern take on positioning your car in the female market reached its apogee when Subaru made their cars the choice of lesbians.   (Think about that if you’re considering a new Outback or Forester.)  And while the Mazda Miata became the fashion statement for West Coast homosexual men, it was never marketed as such.  (For those who want to find cars to avoid because they’re associated with lesbians and homos, this tongue-in-cheek [sic]  list will spell them out for you.)

I don’t have a problem with cars best driven by women.  I think a woman looks better in a Lancia Fulvia than in a Pontiac TransAm or Camaro, by the way.  But then again I’m a sucker for classy, feminine women, so take that anyway you want.  No prizes for guessing which one of these I think is more appealing:

As Mr. Free Market says:  I’m just too old-fashioned to live.


By the way, lest you think I was having a go at metrosexuals and the Fiat 500 in my earlier comment, note this British ad:

Uh huh.

Oh, and by the way, if we’re talking about then and now, here’s an old take on Fiat’s open-top:

…and their new one, by way of Gucci:

I should point out that the older Fiat 500 was originally marketed as a family car.  The modern one?  Not quite so much.

19 comments

  1. “…or whether the car manufacturers’ marketing departments didn’t want to risk alienating potential male customers…”

    Likely that. More than once previous to the 1960s American manufacturers had produced cars optioned for and marketed exclusively towards women, and they never sold well.

  2. My wife & I (for the record, female and male respectively) have had a total of 3 Subarus: 2 Outbacks and a Forester. They’re damn fine cars for what we want in a vehicle. Granted it could be that I feel that way because I fit 2 of the 5 categories Subaru identified as their core marked: IT professional & outdoorsy type.

    A few years ago on a camping trip a trio of ladies driving a Subaru pulled in to the camp site next to our (all male) group. One of our group knew of the Subaru marketing campaign which, chauvinist pigs that we are, elicited a great deal of ribald speculation on our part. In our defense, alcohol was involved.

    1. As long as none of the speculation involved the words “love triangle”…

    2. I too have an Outback, a 2014 purchased last September. I got one with the 6-cylinder (because 6 > 4), and it’s been fantastic. Huge amounts of space, rear-seat legroom rivaling my wife’s Town & Country minivan, and probably the quietest and most comfortable car I’ve ever owned.

      Admittedly, I also fit 1 of the 2 categories that jrgrizz57 noted (I don’t know what the other 3 are): IT pro.

    3. I had an Outback as a rental car for two weeks. I found it pretty impressive. Decent performance, oodles of leg and storage room.

  3. Over here the Fiat 500 is pretty much exclusively a ladies’ car – that is, they do the driving. As are other small cars of the era like the VW Polo and – to some extent – the VW Golf.

  4. I don’t care who identifies with what, I’d love to have a Lancia from the 50s or 60s. Timeless design.

  5. Dang! I did not know the Miata MX-5 was a homo car! 🙁 I was thinking of getting one when I got too old to ride the motorcycle, kind of reminds me of the small British roadsters they made back in the day, which are, alas, now gone. I’m so disappointed!

    JC

    1. That is precisely what the Miata was made to be: an emulation of the classic British sports car, but with Japanese reliability.

      They have a stellar reputation as track cars, which is why the first couple generations (which stuck closest to the light + simple ideal) can be hard to find at low price.

      1. We had a 1991 Miata. I’d also add that we had two RX4wagons* and an RX7 first gen. That car gave me more smiles to the mile than anything I’ve ever owned. It was my first wife’s, SOOZ (See today’s Ammo Girl column.), mid-life crisis car. I kept it until two years ago when I sold it to Mike Collins, not the astronaut, who has a stable of Miata race prepped cars at Summit Raceway in West Virginia. Get yourself a racing license and for, IIRC, $900 a weekend you can go racing.

        * The first one was totalled when someone ran a stop sign and my wife T-boned her. We bought them from Ray Walle, a well known race car driver and Cannonball participant in an RX4 wagon identical to ours, at Z&W Mazda in Princeton.

    2. I had a ’90 Miata. Retired it thirteen years later, with 243,000 miles on it. It WAS a British roadster – Mazda bought three Lotus Elans, shipped them to Hiroshima, figured out what made them such a big deal…then turned a Japanese detail design team loose to fix the problems.

      The result was one of the greatest cars ever made. Not the fastest acceleration, but fiendishly maneuverable, delightful to drive, and as reliable as a brick. But small.

  6. I’m of an age where I remember reading an article on “Best Cars” in Playboy back in the 50’s where they awarded the MB 300-SL (believe is was Late-50’s, and it was the convertible) as their Best Car (or next to it), and remarked that it was a “masculine vehicle”, but they noted that MB was nice enough to build something you could buy for the wife or mistress: The 190-SL!
    So, this is not all that new.

      1. We had a 1991 Miata. I’d also add that we had two RX4wagons* and an RX7 first gen. That car gave me more smiles to the mile than anything I’ve ever owned. It was my first wife’s, SOOZ (See today’s Ammo Girl column.), mid-life crisis car. I kept it until two years ago when I sold it to Mike Collins, not the astronaut, who has a stable of Miata race prepped cars at Summit Raceway in West Virginia. Get yourself a racing license and for, IIRC, $900 a weekend you can go racing.

        * The first one was totalled when someone ran a stop sign and my wife T-boned her. We bought them from Ray Walle, a well known race car driver and Cannonball participant in an RX4 wagon identical to ours, at Z&W Mazda in Princeton.

  7. I’d prefer a Cadillac Sedan DeVille from the 70s. It’s what my folks drove.

  8. In 1977, I bought my then fiancé a 1971 Opel GT.

    It was such a POS that to this day I’m sure that’s why she dumped me. I think I paid as much in tow bills as I did for the car.

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