Tag Archives: ladies evenings

garage services

Do Yorkshire men know it all?

Leeds garage Motor Marque is a member of the FOXY Lady Approved and Trust My Garage UK networks. They started offering free Motor Smart evening car maintenance classes to women in 2008.

motor-smart-women

They then opened these to men as well but there were no male takers… so it went back to the original model, calling the evenings MotorSmart Women.

To see how these evenings are organised, please see our interview with the garage’s Louise Richardson.

What does this tell us about Yorkshire women and men?

Sold at Staffordshire Oatcakes website...
Sold at Staffordshire Oatcakes website…
We’re talking elementary gender basics here.

That most women are more willing to admit they don’t know something and are then prepared to learn about it.

Whereas many men are unwilling to admit to not knowing something to another male, especially when it comes to their cars.

Of course, it is remotely possible that Yorkshire men are born with a ‘know it all’ gene?

For who wouldn’t feel a tad awkward putting the likes of leading Yorkshire born and bred males like Jeremy Clarkson, Brian Blessed, Sean Bean, Tom Wilkinson, John Simm, Malcolm McDowell and Michael Palin through oil checks and changing wheels? What could you tell them that they wouldn’t know already?

Rae Ellis, Motor Marque’s Business Development Manager puts it well explaining that “Whilst we have full attendance at our maintenance classes, they are always only attended by women. I think there is a stigma attached to cars that men should already know how to look after them and carry out basic checks and our attendances reflect this.”

yorkshireman-colour

Terry Gibson from the RMI’s Trust My Garage scheme added: “It’s great to see women starting to give men a run for their money when it comes to car maintenance and initiatives like Motor Marque’s free maintenance classes are a really great benefit for drivers.”

We don’t see car maintenance in such a competitive light Terry but perhaps that’s because Motor Marque provides FOXY Lady Drivers Club members with free car fitness checks. This is a great incentive to visit the ‘professionals’ on a regular basis – just to make sure we’re getting the DIY maintenance right.

Oh and when we’re there we can have a coffee and a chat whilst booking our car in for its next servicing and MOT ;).

women drivers

Strategic uses of hairspray at times of stress

BBC Sussex contacted us recently to ask about instances of road rage and I was able to tell him Jill’s story as we’d discussed this at a previous networking evening.

She was happy to be interviewed about this subsequently and you can hear what she said on the Danny Pike show here.

The point is that the man in question clearly had a superiority and gender complex when it came to motoring. As he saw it, he was in the right at the Shoreham roundabout, and it sounds as if the fact that the other driver was female just added fuel to his fury. In our experience he isn’t alone in this attitude, much as some motorists associate bad driving with little old men wearing hats, many men automatically conclude that any suspect driving behaviour must mean a female driver whereas the problem may well lie with our misguided perceptions in the first place.

In this instance this bias affected his driving ability and, potentially, the safety of a queue of motorists in his wake.

Having lured Jill into the welcome relief of seeing him head for a different exit at the next roundabout (some 5 miles later) he then turned tail and followed her into Steyning. So he was now behind her rather than in front which is a more worrying scenario.

Fortunately Jill could remember the good advice we’d both been given at a Women In Gear Ladies Dealership evening at West Sussex Kia earlier this year. In short, never drive to your home because he’ll then know where you live. Much better to pull into a well lit and busy forecourt where others are or drive to a Police Station you know will be open (which may be trickier in future, what with the cuts…).

And most importantly, have a pen and paper handy so you can write down the registration number – you’ll have to memorise it of course and keep repeating it until you can stop safely and write it down. This means you can then report him to the Police as Jill did. And should the worst come to the worst, or you are accosted in a car park you can’t easily escape from, make sure you know how to lock yourself in your car or have something to defend yourself if he gets too close.

Such as a spray of sorts it was suggested. Hairspray anyone? Ideal for hair emergencies first and foremost – but it’s always good to be prepared just in case…

FOXY