Women and Cars

They love classic racetracks, challenging rallies, or grand adventures. They love speed, challenge, and risk. They love cars.

What hardly anyone knows today: women were at the forefront of automotive history from the very beginning: as racing drivers, adventurers, businesswomen, and engineers. Today, they are barely known. Yet, the history of motorsport, in particular, holds some of the most dazzling – female – personalities of the last 130 years: behind the wheel, in the workshop, in operations.

It was the German Bertha Benz who was the first person ever to cover a longer distance by car. The automobile’s triumph around the world is thanks to the Frenchwoman Louise Sarazin, a daring entrepreneur who helped the new, revolutionary German invention achieve a breakthrough. In Germany, Amalie Hoeppner became the first German woman to receive a driving license in Leipzig in 1909. The Austrian Olga Frühwald won a race against prejudice in 1923 and later founded a resistance group against the Nazis in her driving school. There is Clärenore Stinnes, who decided to drive around the world after her racing career. Or Sophie Opel, who first led her husband’s company to success.

There are countless fantastic stories about the early female pioneers of motoring. Even today, they sound adventurous – back then, they were revolutionary. It is no surprise that the handful of women who, despite everything, managed to get behind the wheel of a car were extraordinary. So many obstacles were placed in their way that they absolutely needed qualities like assertiveness, perseverance, courage, and independence. This remains true to this day.