Men still have trouble getting used to Stacy Tucker, a former suspension engineer at General Motors who owns a custom hot rod car shop in North Carolina with her husband, Kyle. She beat most of the male variety in the autocross competition Saturday at LP Field, where she raced around a 1,000-foot tightly curved track in her 1969 blue Camaro as part of the Goodguys fourth annual Nashville Nationals Car Show. Her time: 45 seconds on a 55-second track.
In an age when most industries saw the gender barrier breached years ago, women who fix cars and race them still find themselves a bit of an oddity.
"It's still an old boys' club,'' said the 38-year-old Tucker.
This weekend, as she cruised up to the race gate with her souped-up engine making its deep huffing sounds, several people peered in at her and said: "There's a girl in there."
Sometimes, when she answers the phone at her business, Detroit Speed and Engineering in Mooresville, N.C., people will insist on speaking to someone who can answer a technical question, assuming that she can't.
But Tucker gave up arguing with them and usually just hands the phone to a man.
"For the sake of the business, I've learned to turn the phone over,'' she said. "I guess they're embarrassed to talk to a girl."
Women have won racing events for decades, but they still draw attention in ways that men don't. Take top drag car racer 26-year-old Ashley Force Hood, who in 2008 became the first woman to win the NHRA Funny Car races.
"She's very beautiful and she's very good,'' said Wendell Marlowe, a 53-year-old from Mt. Juliet who went to the show at LP Field on Saturday and watched the autocross competition. "Women have proven they can be competitive."
Two other men watching the event mused about why men seem to love cars more than women do.
"Women grew up with dolls,'' said Rod Socha, a 61-year-old from Eddyville, Ky. "It's not part of their mentality."
Greg C. Lewis of Waverly, Tenn., sees it differently.
He said men used to take their girlfriends to car shows to show them off as "eye candy."
"They would hold up the flags,'' Lewis said. "The girls said, 'We're tired of being your eye candy.' They're starting to go out and buy their own cars. They've built their own cars and they do their own maintenance."
His friend Brenda Griggs, who raced at the autocross competition Saturday, owns a 1967 Pontiac Firebird, a shiny black car with leather seats.
She got so tired of men assuming she was driving her husband's car that she bought a personalized plate for the front bumper that says: "Her Bird."
When asked, her husband says he owns the "rat rod," a truck he put together from parts from a Ford, a Chevy and a Pontiac.
While his wife has turned down offers of $25,000 for her Firebird, her husband, Greg, says he put about $2,500 into his truck.
Another woman who never ceases to surprise the opposite sex is Carmen Levise, a 21-year-old who says she was one of just a handful of female students at Nashville Auto-Diesel College. She graduated in 2007 and dreams opening an auto shop.
She said a lot of women are not mechanics because "their husbands or boyfriends said no, absolutely not."
Levise recently married an auto mechanic and they own seven classic cars and a truck. She said she didn't have a dad or brother who dragged her to auto shows or races as a child.
Instead, she decided automobiles interested her more than art, her other passion.
"You have to have a tough shell,'' said Levise, who works in paint sales for NAPA Auto Parts.
"Guys stare at you all the time. They hit on you all the time. They either love you or they hate you."
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090628/NEWS01/906280368/Women+car+lovers+still+face+prejudice
Wish i could find a girl like this...
(Note to self : do not use wee bit in the same sentence as penis)
