REVIEW: Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide by Patrice Banks
A do-it-herself guide to auto maintenance, roadside emergencies, and the real scoop on how women can get honest car service at the garage, from engineer turned auto mechanic and award-winning entrepreneur Patrice Banks.
Do you feel lost when explaining your car problems to a mechanic? Do you panic when something goes wrong with your ride? Have you felt like you were being overcharged or pressured into unnecessary add-ons at the auto shop?
Fear no more: The Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide has got your back.
So many women feel powerless, nervous, or embarrassed when taking our cars in for a repair, and yet we outnumber men both as drivers and as customers at auto repair shops The time has come for us to grab the wheel and finally take control of our cars.
Filled with easy-to-follow illustrations and instructions, great tips, and lifesaving rules of thumb, The Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide will help take away the confusion and mystery surrounding cars, teach women what they need to know about how their cars work, and what they need to do to keep them running smoothly.
Patrice Banks was once like most of us: a self-professed “auto airhead” who was clueless about car maintenance, yet convinced that mechanics were taking advantage of her. Now she’s an auto pro devoted to empowering women to learn basic car repairs and knowing what to do in an emergency. So whether you get a flat tire when you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, your car overheats, or a mysterious dashboard light suddenly starts blinking, help is just a reach-in-the-glove-box away.
Dear Ms. Banks,
When I saw this book, I jumped on it. What woman hasn’t been in the situation of needing something done to her car and being at the mercy of a mechanic betting that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Let me relay a true story that happened to the friend of a coworker of mine.
Nancy was an ER nurse and had taken her car in for what she thought was something minor. After leaving it with the mechanic, she entered the waiting room and sat down across the room from the door. A short time later, two young men entered and sat across the room from her, nearer to the door. They began to stare at Nancy, nudge each other and whisper. She ignored them because who wants to encourage someone acting strange.
The mechanic then entered and crossed the room to talk to her. The young men were behind him and out of his line of sight. The mechanic begins spinning a tale of automotive woe about Nancy’s whatjamacallit and her whosis and worst of all her broken thingamabob. As dollar signs are glowing in the mechanic’s eyes, Nancy notices the two young men listening then standing up and giving her the “wave off” sign. As the mechanic waxes lyrically about all that’s wrong with her car, the young men get increasingly frantic in their gesticulations. Nancy thanks the mechanic and tells him to stick to what she brought the car in for. Sorrowfully he shakes his head and tries to talk her into something more (expensive) but she stands firm.
After he leaves the room, she looks over at the young men and cocks her eyebrow. One steps forward and tells her that he had been a patient in the ER and Nancy had been his nurse. She’d been so kind to him that he couldn’t just sit there and let the mechanic take advantage of her.
That story has stuck with me over the years. And it’s not just women who mechanics try to upsell and scam. I’ve had male friends complain about it too! Now that I’ve read this book, I have a much better idea of how my thingamabobs and whatjamacallits all work together to get me from here to there. And better still, I have some idea of what might be wrong with them, how those things are fixed and current repair estimates so I know when I might be getting ready to be ripped off. I’d also love to read about romance heroines who do something other than own bakeries. Let’s have some female auto mechanics too!
Since you actually have a reason behind the red stiletto icons, I can enjoy those and there weren’t too many mentions of broken nails. For the most part, the book sticks to “just the facts, ma’am” and lays things out along with helpful diagrams and tables of information. I do think a paper book might format better than a digital one and would be much easier (duh!) to keep in my glove box where I do plan on putting one.
Thanks for making my next trip to the mechanic a little less scary. B
~Jayne
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I just heard this author interviewed on the radio today and I thought it sounded interesting. Thanks for the review.
Thanks – I just reserved it at my library
Sounds like something I’d like to read. FYI – I’m pretty sure Tanya Michaels has an older category (Harlequin American Romance, maybe) with a female mechanic.
@cleo: She’s apparently done a lot of interviews in the past on various shows and in print. This is from the book – “Patrice Banks, former engineer and auto airhead, is the founder of Girls Auto Clinic, a workshop that empowers women through their cars. After working for twelve years as an engineer, Banks began leading car-care workshops for women. Her inspiring story has been told in publications like O, The Huffington Post, Good House-keeping, and Elite Daily, among others, and she’s appeared on CBS This Morning, Fox & Friends, and more.”
I think this is all kinds of wonderful!
@MikiS: I remembered one of our First Sale posts from years ago which featured Gennita Low ( https://dearauthor.com/features/interviews/my-first-sale-by-gennita-low/?preview_id=3474&preview_nonce=47caeddf6d&_thumbnail_id=3565&preview=true) who was at the time a roofer. I’d love to see some heroines who are electricians, plumbers, roofers or mechanics.
@MikiS: I vaguely recalled reading one book with a female auto mechanic years ago and finally remembered the author and title. Julie Miller – Out of Control
https://dearauthor.com/ebooks/review-out-of-control-by-julie-miller/