Ford ad for 'Men's Only Edition' Explorer celebrates women

Article content

March 8 is International Women’s Day, and in honour of it, Ford has unveiled an ad and a webpage for the new “Men’s Only Edition” of its Explorer SUV. Say what? Well, okay, there’s more to it than that. The “commercial” starts off as if it’s a traditional car ad — but then goes on to say that the “Men’s Only” explorer doesn’t have windshield wipers, a heater, turn signals, a rearview mirror, or GPS. It then explains this Explorer is “missing all the parts created by women.”

Article content

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Ford ad for 'Men's Only Edition' Explorer celebrates women Back to video

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

In a press release, the automaker said that in recognition of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, it is “celebrating the significant role that women have played in the development of the modern automobile.”

So, what’s the story behind all those innovations? The windshield wiper is credited to Mary Anderson, an Alabama resident who visited New York City in 1902. She rode a streetcar on a snowy day and watched the driver get out several times to clean off the windshield. She patented a wiper that could be manually operated by the driver from inside the vehicle, although automakers didn’t start using it until after her patent expired, and she never made any money from it.

(If you thought the wiper’s inventor was male, you’re likely thinking of Robert Kearn. He patented an intermittent wiper in 1967, and later successfully sued Ford and Chrysler for making wipers that infringed on his patent. The story was made into a 2008 movie, Flash of Genius, starring Greg Kinnear.)

Article content

The heater? That’s credited to Margaret Wilcox of Chicago, before automobiles were even a common sight. Her design channeled the heat from a train locomotive and fed it into the passenger cars. She received a patent in 1893, her first under her own name — her prior inventions were under her husband’s name, since women couldn’t hold patents then. Early cars used a variety of heating methods, but a truly comfortable one arrived when Ford adopted Wilcox’s invention in 1929.

Turn signals are credited to a Canadian woman, Florence Lawrence, who was one of the earliest silent-movie stars. She bought a car and in 1914 developed a mechanical arm, operated by a button inside the car, that flipped left or right to indicate a turn. She also made an arm that flipped up a “Stop” sign when she pushed the brake pedal, although she never filed patents for her inventions.

Article content

The rearview mirror is credited to two women. Dorothy Levitt was one of the first female race drivers in Britain, starting out racing boats in 1903; and then cars for London-based automaker Napier, and setting speed records for both. In 1909, she wrote a book for female motorists and suggested they carry a hand mirror to see what was behind them.

Dorothée Pullinger took it a step further. She was the daughter of a car designer, and became the same in an auto factory in Scotland that her father managed. After the First World War, she created and built a car called the Galloway. Cars of the day were built for larger men, while the Galloway had closer pedals, a higher seat, and a smaller steering wheel better suited for shorter women — along with a standard rearview mirror. About 4,000 were built, and almost all the factory workers were women.

Article content

And GPS? Actress Hedy Lamarr disliked Hollywood parties and instead spent her spare time inventing things. During the Second World War, she came up with a system of radio transmitters and receivers that switched frequencies so the message couldn’t be intercepted. That eventually became the basis for modern communication systems and the foundation for global positioning. Then, in 1956, mathematician Gladys West became the second Black woman ever hired as a programmer by a naval base in Virginia. In 1978, she became project manager of a surveillance satellite program, and her calculations were the basis of modern GPS.

It’s a clever video from Ford, and a fascinating way to highlight International Women’s Day. And we might add that while Henry Ford was the driving force behind his company, his wife Clara was beside him all the way, dripping gasoline into his engine in the kitchen sink as he worked to get it running.