Honda introduces car designed just for women

The auto industry has traditionally been male-dominated but Honda has rolled out a new model it claims to have specifically designed with women in mind.

The new Honda Fit She’s is a pretty-in-pink version of the maker’s familiar subcompact that offers a few niceties the maker believes will specifically appeal to distaff buyers, such as a windshield designed to block skin-wrinkling ultraviolet rays.
But will women actually care? While the new Honda subcompact may be the only car currently on the road specifically targeting women there’s a good reason. Previous feminine offerings, such as the old Dodge LaFemme, met with little more than indifference and, in some cases, outright hostility.


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Priced at $17,500 – at current exchange rates – the Honda Fit She’s is currently available only in the Japanese market and it’s unclear whether the maker will roll it out in other parts of the world.
Like those vehicles handed out as prizes by Mary Kay Cosmetics, the dominant shade is pink, starting with the exterior pain and including the interior pink stitching and tutti-frutti-hued chrome bezels. If that doesn’t get the message across, Honda uses a pretty little heart to replace the apostrophe in “She’s.”
To Honda’s credit, the maker also has plans to offer the special model in an alternate hue that might best be called “eyeliner brown.”
The Fit She’s also delivers some other features women might appreciate. That includes the special UV-blocking window glass. Recent studies have underscored concerns that extended exposure to the sun while driving can be nearly as bad for the skin as spending too much time on the beach.
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The Honda Fit She’s also features a “Plasmacluster” climate control system the maker claims can improve skin quality.
The decision to offer the car in the Japanese market isn’t all that much of a surprise considering the country’s more traditional sex-defined roles. As much as half of all Japanese women stay out of the workforce and still more tend to shift to homemakers after getting married. But even for those women who do join the workforce, there is more of a divide in tastes than one might find in Western countries.
That has stifled efforts by European and U.S. manufacturers who previously tried to target products directly to women. Chrysler, for one, thought it had a winner with the 1955 LaFemme. The sedan featured special storage places for hat and purse – and the driver’s seat swiveled to allow a woman wearing a skirt to enter or exit the vehicle with appropriate modesty. Nonetheless, like the few other offerings openly aimed at American women over the years, LaFemme proved LaFlop.
One might think that the U.S. auto industry would be inspired by the Honda Fit She’s. After all, women now directly purchase over a third of the vehicles sold in the States, while data from J.D. Power and Associates suggests they “influence” as much as 60% of all vehicle purchases.