The Ultimate Chick Car
Forbes.com released this year list of most popular cars for men and women. The ultimate chick car pictured, however, failed to make the list.
Guy/chick cars, a clever angle of men-Mars-women-Venus theme, made for an entertaining read when I first stumbled on Jean Lindamood's devastatingly funny take on the VW Cabriolet. Her definition of a chick car was witty but entirely refutable; a sporty car without the muscle to back it up...as I recalled. Her definition would have included the 550 Spyder as a chick car; 1.5 flat four, 110 bhp. That article was published in the early 1990's. Now, a decade later, this guy/chick car shtick is becoming tedious. Aside from the new Beetle, which VW deliberately marketed to women, is there a women specific modern car? Nearly 25% of the new Corvettes are bought by women. The facts that cars are becoming easy and safe to operate and that women have gained immense financial independence and can buy the cars of their desire should put to rest the macho grandstanding and the condescending put down associate with this labeling. Also, it is lame to cherry picked data to perpetuate the persistence of this pointless topic. Here is the conclusion of the Forbes article: "Of course, registration data does not necessarily tell us who is driving the cars — parents put their kids’ cars in their names; husbands put their wives’ cars in their names and vice-versa — but it is the closest we can come to understanding gender demographics in new-car purchasing."
Full disclosure: I drive a chick car.
Update: Many thanks to Mark Tapscotts for linking this post.
