Erin Baker: Grid girls in F1 – long overdue retirement

Well done car brands, you’re now more Neanderthal-minded, more backward-looking, less imaginative, less in touch with your customers, than two sports who have always been the absolute bastion of male chauvanism, one of which has intermittently supported international regimes with questionable internal political ethics, and who have been great supporters of the tobacco industry. 

As for the likes of Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, who this week adopted the traditionally and equally unimaginative, obvious stance of liberal feminism, which says, in air-plucked outrage: “why shouldn’t women wear nipple tassels if they want to?”, and “It’s not for men to tell women what they can and can’t do” (yeah, yeah, go back to editorial conference and pick another stance out of the viewpoint pot), it’s an echo on the wind, after the fact: grid girls were a weird anomaly a decade ago: that it’s taken this long for them to go is not so much an outrage, just bizarre.

But not half as bizarre as the Fiat/Alfa/Abarth girls (and even Skoda girls) who are STILL draped over static cars on stands where suited male executives prowl their turf, shining for the cameras, under the hot lights, talking about YOY European sales figures in self-congratulatory tones while both they and the girls sweat and the public just looks bored. 

Geneva motor show takes place next month and it will yet again be the antithesis of what a motor show should be: grey, silent, uncomfortable, boring, static, un-engaging, uninspiring, intimidating, and run by, presented by and geared towards, men. And yet the key influencer in more than 80 per cent of purchasing decisions of the product, and the end user in the majority of purchases, is female (there’s also a large influencer demographic completely sidelined – children – but that’s another argument). 

I’ve given up trying to make sense of it. You simply can’t pick that puzzle apart and find a scintilla of reason. There is none. It’s far more of an anomaly than F1 grid girls. It’s far more embarrassing. And it’s far more damning for the industry.

Would you walk into the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, or an Apple store in West London, and be overwhelmed by the testosterone in the room? No: the tech industry is, and always has been, gender-neutral.

It was born in a gender-neutral era, whereas the automotive industry is far older, born in a time where largely men bought, looked after and used the product. But this whole women-equality thing isn’t a phenomena of the 21^st century which has just slapped the car industry unexpectedly in the face. Women were racing and beating men at Brooklands before the Second World War, for Pete’s sake. Car brands HAVE HAD TIME TO ADJUST.

They just haven’t. It’s embarrassing, and it’s making them irrelevant to Generation Z, now in their teens, who would rather call an Uber than buy an Audi. And you know what? The car industry deserves its decline. It makes me sadder than anything: my entire career has been spent in this industry: it contains some of the world’s finest minds, engineers and designers, and some of the world’s nicest, most generous, most innovative, and kindest people. But they simply cannot – or will not – collectively lift the blinkers. Adapt or die – it’s as simple as that.

Photography courtesy of LAT Images