DRIVE ME CRAZY!

“I don’t drive. No aptitude... It is just a vehicle that takes me from place A to place B. I confess a weakness for Jaguars, though.” Shobhaa De, author and columnist, who owns a Merc, and says, she is no ‘car fanatic’.

 

“I know the kind of car that will suit the person I am,” says Gul Panag, model and actor, who owns a BMW, which she says, is ‘sporty’ and ‘more a driver’s car’. She also has a passion for bikes.

 

The two statements reflect a massive shift in the way women look at cars. For young, ambitious, and assertive women, it’s no more just a vehicle which takes one from place A to place B. It’s much more than that.

 

Women’s association with cars has been as long as cars themselves. Automakers have long banked on women’s attraction to pull men, the traditional car buyers, to their stalls at auto expos, while movie makers have projected women as someone who could easily mix speed with glamour and then there have been a bunch of men who have propagated jokes about women being bad drivers.

 

But the nature of the relationship between women and cars has undergone dramatic changes. And MoneyQuin thought an onlooker’s account would influence better than a first person perspective. So here we have a man recount the evolving relationship between cars and women.

 

Bangalore-based 30-year-old freelance photographer, Arjun Kalra had a chance to closely observe the changing scenario as he grew. Here’s what Arjun told us.

 

“...I have seen it since I was a kid.

 

My mom had a car to herself, which she would use to go to some friend’s or relative’s place. She was a homemaker and didn’t have a compulsion to drive to an office everyday. She didn’t know how to drive though. She had tried learning but gave up after a few training sessions. There were not too many driving schools those days, at least not in the part of the world we lived. We had a help, who doubled up as a part-time driver for the good old Maruti 800, which was given to my mom for exclusive use when my father could afford a second car, a little fancier and more efficient. Family, total four of us, usually travelled in the new car. The old car nevertheless had a place of pride in a neighbourhood where most families were without car.

 

When I started going to college, father bought me a bike. Girls still liked riding pillion on a bike though some of the cutest and rich babes drove in some really sexy four-wheelers. Our neighbourhood too had changed visibly by then. When I was a kid, the neighbourhood mainly comprised single-storey buildings of about 150-200 sq yards each. Now storeys had been added, the open spaces converted into parking lot with long queues of car suddenly shutting out kids from their daily street cricket.

There were many women who could be seen driving or rather parking their cars everyday.

 

My mother, who never saw driving as any great skill, was impressed by women half her age or even lesser driving car. Many houses here had been rented to single working women, who probably earned enough to own a car. These women – there were not more than 3-4 young ones we regularly saw from our home using car-- soon became a dinner table discussion for us. My mother almost always broached the topic and father would have a long analysis on how they were landing plum jobs and getting their cars financed and how it was important to buy a car than suffer hassle and humiliation in public transport and how safer it is to drive your own car than be at the mercy of some driver who might one day turn out to be a criminal.

 

Interestingly, all these young women in our neighbourhood owned different cars but three of the four were small cars of red, wine red and blue. The fourth woman had a sedan--an impressive and popular model. We, thinking it would be costly, guessed it must have been her father’s gift. Later, as we discovered, it was actually a gift from her father, but the well-paid and “proud daughter” returned the entire money in instalments even offering to gift her mom a car. Her mother, who had become an acquaintance, told us.

 

For others we didn’t bother to enquire.

 

Since then women owning and driving cars have only increased. And if you look closely you can see a pattern in what they buy.

 

Here MoneyQuin interrupted Arjun to tell him the car manufacturer’s perception. Arvind Saxena, marketing and sales director at Hyundai Motors India, country’s second-largest car maker says, “Indian women prefer compact cars and use mainly for driving with in the city for short distances.”

 

“Price, style, safety and driving comfort” are the key factors behind a car purchase decision, Saxena says, adding that women preferred i10 & i20 models of Hyundai because of its styling, convenience, and luxurious features.

 

Arjun agreed and then continued. Another quick survey I did among my business associates a few weeks ago brought me similar findings. A car for a woman was a symbol of style or status as much as it was a convenience. So no compromise on looks - exterior as well as interior. Then would come price and the mileage. Many women would easily prefer a sedan over small car, but for the latter’s several advantages of easy manoeuvrability, cheaper ride and smaller space required to park. And the engine power and other technicalities, which auto makers and experts put so much premium on, are rarely on the mind of women car owners.