Women purchase or influence the decision for billions of dollars worth of cars each year yet the motoring industry continues to be male-dominated at every stage such as advertising, magazines, car dealerships and servicing.

While the airport car rental and motoring industry is slowly waking up to this there is still a long way to go. Luckily there are a number of female bloggers and business owners paving the way.

Here we look at six of our favourite female motoring bloggers to follow in 2013.

1: Jody DeVere of askpatty.com

Follow @: https://twitter.com/askpatty

Jody DeVere’s heads up askpatty.com which provides great tips on choosing and servicing cars for women and where to find women friendly dealerships and servicing locations. This is managed through the AskPatty.com Certified Female Friendly program. Not only do her efforts improve the state of the automotive marketing industry, but result in better offers and retention strategies for female drivers. Jody is also a specialist in social media, helping brands ensure their communication is of the utmost quality on social networks. She has won various awards for her expertise including Chic of the Week, a dedicated award for businesswomen, and she is also the President of the Woman’s Automotive Association International.

What we love:

  • How Jody is improving the automotive industry for women by targeting advertisers and the offers they provide
  • Communication in the automotive industry over social media between retailers and women is constantly improving, thanks largely to Jody’s activities

2: Tara Weingarten of vroomgirls.com

Follow @ https://twitter.com/VroomGirls

Lego Avatar for Tara Weingarten

Tara Weingarten is the editor-in-chief of www.vroomgirls.com, and although she is the boss, she is far from absent from the daily workings of the site. Indeed, Tara has her own question and answer page, inviting queries from motorists of varying levels of experience which she answers personally.

Before running VroomGirls, Tara was the columnist behind Newsweek’s Road Test feature, editing the piece for over ten years. She has passed various advanced driving courses such as the Porsche Sport Driving School’s Master Class, Maserati’s Advanced Driving School in Parma, Italy and BMW’s M Performance Driving School Advanced Course. She also has a glittering portfolio, having written for The New York Times, Esquire and Time Magazine.

What we love:

  • Tara’s hands-on style, including the ‘ask Tara’ section on her website open to all consumer motoring queries
  • Her bright personality and the modern and stylish feel of her website

3: Juliet Potter of autochic.com.au

Lego Avatar for Juliet PotterFollow @ https://twitter.com/AutoChic

Juliet Potter can be seen as something of a trend-setter. Exasperated with the state of the male-dominated car industry in 2000, Juliet launched www.autochic.com.au, the first motoring website aimed at women. As well as launching the site, Juliet has a list of accolades writing for major Australian media outlets providing opinion pieces and automotive articles. Some of the titles she has written for include The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, New Woman and Cosmopolitan. She has also attended various training seminars as a guest speaker for brands like Toyota and Hyundai, while she additionally launched the first Australian Car of the Year Awards for women.

What we love:

  • Juliet’s determination and hard work to feminize the automotive industry and provide a platform for women online
  • Her respected status within the industry as one of Australia’s leading car experts

4: Anne Fleming, Car Buying Advocate at women-drivers.com

Lego Avatar for Anne Fleming

Follow @ https://twitter.com/womendrivers

Anne Fleming’s activities focus predominantly around democratizing the car purchasing process for women. Before setting up women-drivers.com, Anne worked for 20 years as a strategic product specialist for a number of major brands. However, her latest endeavour aims to put women directly in touch with respectable car retailers who have earned the ‘Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™’ badge. Her activities have improved the car purchase process for thousands of women, while her work has seen her featured on major platforms such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, MYV Real World and ABC News.

What we love:

  • Anne writes with a genuine passion and excitement for all things car related, and its hard not to be won over by her boundless enthusiasm
  • Her efforts to provide a voice to women who may have previously been intimidated at the prospect of buying a car

5: Hilary Green – carsforgirls.com

Follow at: https://twitter.com/CarsForGirls

Hilary created Cars for Girls to empower women in the process of buying a car. While women spend over $30 billion on cars a year the industry is very male focussed and many women hate going to a car dealership to buy a car.

Before writing for carsforgirls.com, Hilary Green worked for BMW as a salesperson in one of the brand’s forecourts in Philadelphia. From there, she has tirelessly worked her way up to hold every position at the forecourt, including running her own sub-dealership. Her activities led her BMW dealership to be named the best sales agency in the tri-state area, while she personally was ranked fourth in the country for Audi sales. She also holds the distinction of at one time having sold more pre-owned Porsches than anyone in the US.

What we love:

  • Hilary’s expertise in car retail and services gained from the ground up when she worked at BMW
  • Has a true passion for cars and wants to share her wealth of experience with other women
  • Provides details step by step guides to research and buying a car along with tips on car maintenance
  • Blog with great car buying and maintenance tips
  • Her focus on customer satisfaction at all times

6: Ling Valentine of LingCars.com

Follow at: https://twitter.com/LINGsCARS

Ling Valentine is certainly a figure like no other in the car industry. Most famous for being featured on British reality business show Dragon’s Den, Ling’s website is a mixture of bubblegum pop tunes, garish colours and fantastically low prices on car leases. Her website is certainly a little on the cluttered side, but her infectious personality still makes her one of our favourite female motoring experts.

What we love:

  • Ling’s bright personality and her website’s sense of humour
  • Her dedication to bringing value and low-cost cars at all times
  • Marketing ideas like no one else such as owning a nuclear missile truck with her web address on the missile!
Her website (screenshot below) has to be seen to be believed!

screenshot of the home page of ling's cars

Check out this video showing her appearance on the Dragons Den.