Women, the people that help us make babies, clean our homes and do our dishes are partly responsible for the death of the manual transmission. Let’s learn about this in the latest Uncooked Truth.
Woman. The very word alone already describes someone who’s less able and not as smart as their male counterparts. A woman isn’t as strong as a man, nor can she be as powerful as any man.
A woman can’t be president, nor can she have any real existence outside the home.
Let’s be honest. A woman is only good for doing the dishes, making my food, cleaning my clothes, keeping my house maintained, and raising my children.
Ladies, are you pissed off yet? Well you should be, because this is how you’ve been seen and thought of for thousands of years.
Do I believe this? God no. But I needed to make you mad and stick around for the rest of the article. So keep reading.
After that pro-male rant, let me just say that I don’t think women set out to delete the manual transmission from our option list. I also don’t think that it’s a woman’s fault. What I do think, however, is that a woman has been subjected to being second best, or less capable, by a male dominated society. I’m also not trying to take some hard, feminist position on the matter, either. All I’m saying is, thanks to men putting women second in the United States, making them have to be dainty, sexy, more appealing to our eyes, they suddenly didn’t have to drive a car as well, go racing, or drive a manual gearbox. It was too manly to do those things.
It’s true, whether you want to believe it or not. A female’s role in life has always been looked at as less than a man’s. but women are important, especially to car companies.
For more than 60 years, carmakers have been trying to make cars safer and easier to use for everyone. Better, stronger materials to help occupants stay alive during a crash; Power assisted steering and brakes for less effort when steering and stopping. More so, extra comfort on long drives.
But it’s these things that also have hampered the abilities of many modern drivers. We’ve been coddled. Have you ever driven a car without power steering or brakes? I have, and it’s no picnic. And while I got back into my modern car and appreciated the luxuries, I was still very much drawn to that 1967 327/300 Corvette coupe with absolutely zero modern components. I could drive it every day, even on a race track. I felt a connection right away.
But according to carmakers in the ’50s, a woman shouldn’t be so uncomfortable. A woman is fragile; being made of porcelain with white glue holding her all together. Pushing in a clutch pedal is just too tough, as is that hefty steering wheel with her soft baking hands.
After all, a hard day’s work for a girl is cleaning the house while her man is off making the money to get the bread and butter.
Just have a look at AutoGuide’s top ten vehicles purchased by women these days. 60% of them are crossovers with no manual as an option. They’re soccer-mom mobiles, almost all ten of ’em.
MSN recently took a closer look into the control of a female car buyer and found new information from Auto Alliance and interviewing Gloria Bergquist, vice president of public affairs for them.
Berquist said, “The auto industry is not only a guy’s world … Women drive sales too, both as purchasers and as influencers.” She went on to say, “Research shows that women put a priority on safety features, but they also fall in love with a vehicle, just as easily as any man.”
This is definitely true when you look closely at their findings. According to the Auto Alliance, women spend $300 billion on vehicles each year, and 105.7 million women have a driver’s license, beating out men by a shocking 1.4 million.
So women prefer safety to fun. Understandable, since the role they’ve played has been to raise the family and take care of the home. It’s a little hard to take yours 2.3 kids to school in a Porsche Cayman.
But a funny gem, and sad at the same time, is that Fiat recently introduced the 500 Abarth in the US last year with a manual. Now, though, they’re adding an automatic. In Europe the Abarth version of a Fiat was always a hot ticket item, but more for men who liked hot hatches.
So why the autotragic in a hot hatch? Well, I’ll let you read what Fiat’s North American president, Tim Kuniskis, told WardsAuto recently: “I think when we’ll see more women is when we have the automatic, and we’re planning to add the automatic in the Abarth at some point, only because we’re getting that feedback from customers.”
But don’t be a fool, because if you think women are less capable in a car, I’ll just say you need to take a look at girls like Ashley Freiberg, who is the first female to win a race overall in the IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup series at Watkins Glen this year. She also currently sits 6th in her class’ championship points standings out of 40 drivers.
Do we even need to talk about Danica Patrick? Successful or not, she’s a hot commodity. And she could probably beat your ass around a track.
And there are so many others we could name, too.
I also need to mention that there are just as many men who’re weak and can’t drive manuals in this country, mainly because they can’t be bothered. I also know many women personally who drive manuals and nothing but. So to say women are the weaker sex is funny to me, because women have babies… and no weakling can do that. That’s probably the toughest, most manly thing anyone could do. And only a woman can currently do it.
Take a look at the classic Ford advertisements from 1955 to see how women were viewed when it came to cars in society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCbuMIDcAYQ[Photo taken from: Fangirl42.wordpress.com]
