Women Who Make Money Out of Motoring.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue I, 2 January 1904, Page 59

Women Who Make Money Out of Motoring.

The motor-car has opened up dozens of new industries and fresh ways of money-making. But it is curious how few English women have taken up the motor from a business point of view. Let us turn to France and see what the smart business woman there is able to make out of the motor-car industry. The oldest motor-car newspaper in France, "Le Chauffeur,” is owned and ■ edited by a lady. Mdme. Lockert. She is an elderly woman, with grownup sons and daughters, but is still a famous motor whip, joins many long-dis-tance races, and has had some terrible hair-breadth escapes while mountaineering ’mid snow and ice on her motor-car. At the last Agricultural Hall Motor Show this enterprising lady was represented in a business sense bv a feminine partner, who did very well for her principal. Mdme. Loexert exhibited some interesting motor inventions and patent novelties of a most ingenious kind. Then there is Mdme. Longuemare, in Paris, who will sell you a pair of automobile goggles or a motor-launch. You can order from her establishment a magnificent motor-car, or a balloon fitted with the latest fashion of lunch-eon-table for midair repasts, and a special cooking apparatus designed for culinary purposes at so many thousand feet up in cloudland. For you cannot boil ■water for your tea and coffee at some altitudes without a special scientific kitchen outfit. Motor milliners, automobile tailors, mask-makers, veil purveyors and inventors of myriad ingenious dust-protectors —all women —abound in Paris. And then there is Mdlle. Dupre—or, as she prefers to be called. Miss Bob Walter, who is perhaps the most famous among the many French women who make money by motors. She owns and manages, with the help of a large feminine staff, a huge garage and motor-car showroom in the Avenue de la Grande Armee, which in Paris is known as the automobile quarter. "Miss Bob” is a real expert and a matchless business woman. You may generally fina her at her big “shop” dressed in a faultlessly fitting white moleskin motor costume, and invariably wearing a big bunch of Parma violets and a white motoring toque. Take her a second-hand car, and she will ten you within a few centimes exactly how much it will sell for. If you want a car repaired she will skilfully calculate the estimate for alterations, and for making old motors into new. You can store your car here or have it renewed or remodelled, for she has a staff of experienced meeaniciens on hand dav or night.

Miss Bob will let you have a lovely car on hire at so much an hour. It was she who "let out” the car to the Paris doctor who was recently the hero in that famous motor-ear elopement which took the world by storm.

It was the old story of eruel parents

spoiling love’s young dream by wanting a richer son-in-law. So the doctor took sympathetic Miss Walter into his confidence, and a highpowered. swift car enabled the eloping lovers to laugh at a stern parent's slower pursuit. Here in England one or two ladies are slowly adopting giving lessons in motorcar driving as a profession. A few women ambitious of becoming skilful drivers prefer that their teacher should be of their own sex. Some mothers, in the case ot a young daughter wishful of driving the family car. like this instruction to come from a woman rather than from a foreign chauffeur. It eannot be said at present to constitute a lucrative calling, since the demand is very limited. But it is very pleasant work for a woman imbued with motor enthusiasm. It means, sometimes, visits to country houses while the instruction is being given, and if the instructress be a gentlewoman she receives social advantages and an average of three guineas a week during the teaching term. No woman should undertake this unless she has a talent for mechanics and the skill to undertake minor repairsand the patching of punctured tyres. It is easier work than a lady gardener’s post, or than dairying, and in the future will become a recognised open-air profession for gentlewomen.