July 09th, 2010

Although most car designers are men there are plenty of women who are making their way up the ranks.

Wired Magazine recently wrote an article about female car designers and it mentions: Kimberly Wu at Honda, Kerrin Liang of Hyundai, Michelle Christensen at Acura and Christine Park of Cadillac (who designed the interior of the XTS). We have a few more to add namely, Christina Rodriguez at Ford and Fairuz Jane Schiecht who helped design the innovative (and environmentally friendly) interior of the Fisker.

So why are there still so few women designing cars? Wired writes, “Of the 15 to 18 people who graduate from the center’s transportation-design program each year, only two or three are women. It’s the same at Art Center for Design in Pasadena, California, where one in 10 graduates is a woman.” The magazine goes to to note that women make up about 30 % of the global design staff for BMW and 20% at GM.

Designing cars isn’t always all about horsepower and torque. In the article Park says that Coco Chanel is one of her influences. When Drive Like A Woman heard Park speak recently she compared tires on a car to shoes in an outfit. When horsepower meets heels, what a fantastic combination!

Watch Michelle Christensen discuss her design the Acura ZDX.