Car sexism just drives me crazy

Jojo Moyes, no stranger to oily rags, takes a spanner to the myth that motoring is a man's world

Heard the one about the woman who used to hang her handbag upon her choke pull and couldn't understand why her car got such a poor mileage to the gallon? Or the woman who was told she might need occasionally to top her car up with a pint of oil - and religiously poured in a pint every week until the car wouldn't work any more? Nearly every mechanic has. And if you're female, they'll tell you - with the proviso: "I don't want to have a go at you ladies, but ..."

Few people were surprised when an RAC survey this week announced that women were much more likely to be taken for a ride by their local garages. A third of complaints to the RAC about garages come from women; mechanics apparently regularly overcharge them for routine work and dismiss genuine complaints.

After all, women aren't supposed to like cars. To ride in them as glamorous accessories; to drape showily across them at motor shows; to provide a market for the 1.1 litre supermarket runabout, yes. But actually to know about them, no.

"Garage mechanics are less likely to try it on with a male driver because there's always that possibility that he might know something," says the Automobile Association. "I'm afraid they just don't worry about that with women."

To be fair, many mechanics have just cause to be dismissive of women. An unscientific but intensive survey of young, smart, independent women revealed that five out of six could not change a wheel on their own cars.

"I took my car in for a service and the radio wasn't working," said one. "When it came out I paid the bill and they went through all the things they had sorted out - but all I cared about was that the radio still wasn't working."

"I'm totally clueless," said another. "I know I get ripped off every time I go to my dealership. But I don't want my boyfriend or my dad telling me how to do anything, so the only way I'd learn was if I sneaked off to evening class. And I probably wouldn't do that unless something went seriously wrong and cost me loads of money."

Unfortunately, even when we are interested, we are not taken seriously. I am an example of the one in six who can change a wheel - and spark plugs, points and fuses. I am one of those sad people who actually enjoy messing around under the bonnet. Yet highway assistance men smile patronisingly when I tell them the damp is not in the distributor; and check it anyway. Mechanics ask me if my (fast) car is my boyfriend's.

Once, an old friend, 6ft 3 and as testosterone-filled as the best of them, asked me along when he and his father wanted to choose a new Audi. A succession of would-be sellers looked on bemused as a 5ft 3 girl peered inside their engines, ran cloth-covered magnets over the bodywork and stuck her fingers up their exhausts. Then they directed their questions at my friend.

But according to the AA, the notion of the motor as penile extension is wilting. Many men are happy to take the passenger seat and admit to having no knowledge at all.

The AA says that lack of knowledge is virtually universal. "Unfortunately we've got the vast majority of the population going round in cars they don't understand," says a spokesman.

This is reflected in the fact that 8 million of us belong to the AA and more than 5 million to the RAC. Their roadside assistance teams are constantly astonished that we spend tens of thousands of pounds on vehicles to which we entrust our most precious cargos, which we drive at potentially lethal speeds, and about whose workings we know almost nothing.

And the problems we call them out for can be embarrassingly basic. "The main ones are the `eternal battery' - everyone assumes that batteries will last for ever; people running out of petrol and tyre changes," says the AA. "The vast majority fill the car with petrol, may check the oil and water if they remember and think they're being responsible if they top up the washer bottle."

Women, it seems, are not the only ones phased by metal innards. Mindful of the ridicule that had ensued when I confessed to reading Classic Car magazine in bed, I didn't tell anyone, bar one thirtysomething male, that I was buying an antique sports car.

"I'm going to test it tomorrow," I confided to him. "Will you come and help?"

"Sure," he said, and when we arrived at the dealers: "But I don't know anything about cars," as I peered up incredulously from under the sills. "I thought you just wanted one that was pretty."

I eventually settled on a K-registration MGB roadster. Bodywork: honest. Engine: no pinking or smoking. Original chrome features: easily resellable. Overdrive: rare on pre-1974 models. "I like the colour," he said. "How do we put the roof down?"

According to motoring organisations, the increasing complexity of the modern engine means that another male stereotype - the Saturday morning fiddler-under-the-roof - is a dying breed. "Almost all modern cars have a computer brain. The classic analogy is that a new BMW has in its engine management system a computer more advanced than the one that put a man on the moon," says the AA spokesman. "The complexity of modern cars means that even mechanics often don't know much about them. Routine maintenance is almost impossible now on a modern car. You could just about do an oil change, but most of it is electronics," he said.

But for those who find the idea of diving under a car bonnet almost as attractive as diving under the wheels, the outlook is not so depressing. The increasing popularity of fixed-price servicing for particular models means that customers are less likely to get ripped off. And technology means that the daunting complexity of today's engines is likely to be replaced over the years by something much more accessible.

"Ultimately the engine will probably be replaced by a number of black boxes. Car manufacturers will realise that in the end it's easier to replace the entire units," says the AA. "You will end up with a disposable engine that will sense when it is going wrong, send a signal directly to the AA and arrange a rendezvous."

A little black box is unlikely to tut-tut at your failure to check your oil pressure. It certainly won't tell jokes about your handbag.