It’s often been written that if not for women, car colors would only be selected for economy or colors identified with their corporate manufacturers. Without taking that notion for granted, it’s not something easy to prove or to disprove.
A well-researched and cited article by Jithin R. Veer published on a Virginia Commonwealth University site says that “The first cars were unpainted; if painted they were often painted dark gray or black. Black paint was used primarily because it was the least expensive. However, it is also likely black paint was used naturally because, during the gilded age, most machinery and objects of transportation, from carriages to steam railroads to iron-clad steamships were painted black.” I am sure that most of us can pick apart a lot of this statement.
There is no reason for Veer to include it, as he later states, “From 1908 to 1914, Model T Fords were painted in a variety of 4 to 5 available colors. All colors of were of darker shades. Interestingly enough, black was not offered as a color initially. However, from 1914 to 1926, all Model T Fords were indeed painted black. The reason behind this color choice was purely economic: Ford wanted to produce the most number of automobiles in the least amount of time. Because black paint at the time was the least expensive and dried the fastest, black paint allowed Ford to produce a car in about 90 minutes.” Veer’s concludes that “the evolution of color in the American automobile (industry) in the last century has been determined by economic issues facing the automaker, the national mood reflected in consumers, and the consumers’ tastes.”
In order to determine whether “economic issues” include “competition”, whether “consumers” include “women” and “consumers’ tastes” include “colors appealing to women,” let’s expand the story’s scope and include the view of females in society as to the interaction they’ve had with the automotive industry.
The first automobile company founded by a woman was the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation started by Geraldine Elizabeth "Liz" Carmichael, in 1974. The company's flagship vehicle was the Dale, a prototype three-wheeled two-seater automobile designed and built by Dale Clifft. The company would ultimately prove to be fraudulent when Carmichael went into hiding with investors' money rather than build the 50,000 first year models as advertised.
The first female CEO of one of the big three auto makers is Mary Barra of General Motors, a long-time employee of the company rising from inspecting fender panels at 18 to CEO in January 2014 succeeding five other CEOs in six years as the company entered and exited bankruptcy. She has a BS from Kettering University in electrical engineering and an MBA from Stanford.
Jan Bertsch was vice president of sales and marketing at Chrysler for a short time after 2005 having worked at many lower positions at both Ford and Chrysler, and Jill Lajdziak was the VP of Sales, Services, and Marketing at GM’s, Saturn division back in 2000. I can find neither listed as the first female vice president of sales, so there might have been someone earlier, perhaps even much earlier, but certainly no one in the 1920s or 30s.
The first female automotive designer, Helen Rother, was the subject of an article in our March, 2023 issue. Reminder, she worked for GM as an interior designer beginning in 1943.
In a 2010 article, Forbes said that 95% of car dealers were men. It’s often quoted that car salesmen are patronizing to female buyers figuring that their priority would be the car’s color above price or performance, A 2016 Groove auto study said that in a survey a woman’s favorite car color was gold or beige, and a 2017 iseecars.com survey said that a woman’s favorite car color was teal. Surveys have been taken, but female car salesmen have not been hired possibly leading to bias in both surveys and interactions with female purchasers.
Clearly during the Model A Era, women were not automotive producers. Evidence does, however, say that they were consumers. A 1914 Saturday Evening Post marketing report said: “Whatever is bought for family use is selected largely by the wife, and the automobile is no exception. Dealers’ estimates of the proportion of sales of pleasure cars in which women are an important factor vary from 50 percent to 95 percent.” In a 2019 MSNBC story, 65% of new car purchases were made by women.
As with any new invention, the consumer generally adapts before that market adapts to the consumer. Nicole Moelders, the author of the High Latitude Style Blog, makes the point that very early on in automotive history, female passengers struggled to find appropriate dress. Big, fluffy hats, corsets bustles and high boots which could be quite comfortable in a street car would be poor choices for style or comfort in a small, opened, runabout – and over 70% of cars sold up to the early teens were open. Women’s adaptations included wearing scarves to tie down smaller hats without feathers or flowers, motor coats to cover shorter dresses without trains and without gold wire and gemstones that could catch, and even goggles. Included is an illustration from the January 25th 1902 issue of Country Life magazine.
Dorothy Levitt, pioneering British auto racer, in 1909 spoke to women who expected to be not only passengers, but possibly also drivers. They would still need to protect their fashionable clothing, but with something more like a duster than a motor coat, but they’d also need to operate the pedals and nimbly hop into the driver’s seat after cranking the engine, so they would need an even shorter skirt and not wear high lace up boots. They would want gloves, not just to keep their hands warm, but so as their hands wouldn’t smell of gasoline when they took them off.
Fast forward to World War One during which women not employed as domestics or farm labor – which the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t count – rose from 23.6% of the labor force to 46.7% in 1918. Flappers had the reputation, even with historians, as women who smoked, drank, listened to jazz, were openly sexual, and generally flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.
From this historian’s perspective, knowing from my parents that teens in the Fifties were nothing like Grease and little like Happy Days; knowing from a 1970 Kent State student, that the few students shot were hopeful academicians wanting to limit campus recruitment during Viet Nam instead of hundreds of drug-fueled hippies taking over the campus who sought martyrdom. So, this image of 1920’s young, irresponsible feminism, should be looked at with skepticism. Statistically, there was a baby-boomlet in 1919, but the fertility rate and the number of babies born out of wedlock actually declined during the twenties. Politically, at the time women pushed for prohibition equally with suffrage. So, it’s no great leap to actually admire so-called flappers for taking jobs, getting an education, and wanting to wear practical clothing while they drove themselves to work or to college. They were adapting to the needs of their time, including driving automobiles.
In a 1929 newspaper article, record-setting pilot, Louise McPhetridge Thaden explained that women, in jobs like publicity, sales work, and design, especially design, will make their influence felt. "If you remember the bare, uncomfortable, inconvenient automobiles of a few years ago? Well, compare them with this'', with a gesture she indicated the luxurious interior of the Graham-Paige car besides which she was standing. "Do you see the difference? Women brought that about. Upholstery, engine starters, easy gear shifts, color, beauty, ease of handling, convenience. Those are women's work. Automobiles now are nicer than parlors used to be.”
I couldn’t find any new features meant to appeal to women introduced in the 1930s and 40s, in fact quirky items like bud vases disappeared. In 1955 Dodge introduced the Le Femme, a car that came with a matching purse, raincoat and umbrella. It had a pink interior with rose-patterned trim. It was a trim option available on Dodge Custom Royal Lancer models, but was unpopular and fewer than 2500 La Femmes were sold.
Lastly, women haven’t gone away. They remain major purchasers of cars and therefore an influence of car design. If they were what caused cars to be painted in a greater variety of colors in the 1920s, manufacturers would continue to use a variety of colors today (or conspire together to only provide boring, colorless options that depress purchasers who feel they have no choice.) According to iseecars.com (that said that women prefer teal) 78.6% of all cars sold today are shades between white and black, 9.5% are blue (either a silvery, metallic sky-blue [see silver with blue] or a very dark metallic blue [see gunmetal grey with blue], and 8.6% are red. Really noticeable colors like orange, purple, gold and yellow make up a combined 1% of cars produced.
In an unscientific study, I searched craigslist for the new beetle as it struck me as being the only models with routinely bright colors – my sons even pointing them out as “girl cars” which they would never own. There were 13 available for sale, of which two were red, one yellow, and one metallic bronze. The other 9 were shades from white to black plus blueish greys. Above is an advertising photo of 2023 Ford models which show a wide range of colors. It seems that image and reality diverge; what’s desired and what’s produced. Sorry, women.
