Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
Some women think car dealerships are essentially man caves.
If you don’t have the vocabulary of an auto mechanic or the negotiation skills of a horse trader, they say, car buying can feel like a testosterone-fueled experience.
Enter Ruby Davis, a 26-year-old Australia-born fashion designer and online entrepreneur, whose new venture is ChickDriven.com, a website that seeks to feminize the car-buying experience. Davis, who lives in California, says that ChickDriven.com is unlike most car websites that are geared to male customers who are most interested in engineering specs and performance notes.
Instead of sorting car reviews purely by vehicle type – cars, trucks, SUVS, etc. – ChickDriven.com has a web menu that includes such subcategories as, “cars for moms,” “safe cars” and “cute cars.”
It also aggregates articles about cars that might appeal to women. Recent posts include a piece on Fast and Fabulous, a line of purses, a report on rapper 50 Cent angling to host the BBC television show “Top Gear” and an article about a VW dealership offering to give customers test drives while they play Pokemon Go!