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Beware Greeks Bearing Motors

"Sirens," as the earliest auto-show models really were called, were the mythological temptresses who lured sailors off course; early 20th century ads made frequent classical references, which would have resonated with the buyers of the time, especially when amplified with an art nouveau aesthetic. The male figure, here advertising the 1916 Detroit Auto Show, is a representation of Hermes, the swift Greek god of transport and travel.

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Ladies With Curves, and Cars With the Same

By the 1920s,  the classical references had been replaced by fun-looking flappers. This cartoon ran in the Detroit News the week of the Detroit Auto Show (the big kahuna of auto shows), poking gentle fun at the blatant way automakers had begun to draw an explicit line from getting a car to getting a girl.

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The Celebrity Factor

While most car models were anonymous glamour girls, no shill is complete without celebrities. Marlene Dietrich, pictured here endorsing Mercedes, was a genuine auto lover, with a personal collection of luxury cars. Like the automaker, she was of German origin—carmakers loved to draw literal ethnic parallels between their cars and the models. Other celebs inscripted into duty included Miss Americas and Olympic atheletes (whom Nissan sponsored in the '80s in an obvious attempt to rebrand itself as less foreign).

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Hood Ornamentation

Selling a car is in part an act of myth-making. Although the original sirens in The Odyssey were more fowl than fish, they were associated closely with the sea. As Krevsky writes, this mermodel is "live bait" for the buyer. Mesmerizing as she looks in her perch, one can't help but consider the indignities she must have suffered to wriggle her way up there—and that was before she was greeted with the inevitable, "Do you come with the car?"

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Of Human Bondage

As the culture grew more sexually free in the '60s, so did car advertisments. This ad depicts one of the Dodge Girls, "blondes with high-spirited personalities... [who] became the rock stars of their era at the auto shows."  The innocent-looking ladies in evening gowns who reinforced American notions of comfortable prosperity were gone; this image promises danger and adventure.

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Beam Her Up

The futurism of the '60s and '70s was on fully display at auto shows in the form of gimmicky concept cars, like this Chevy Astro III from 1970. The model is dressed to match, in a Star Trek-ish jumpsuit (one that also presaged Princess Leia, eternal sex symbol to the sci-fi set). Other car shows of the era featured women in silvery, clingy variations on a space suit, with helmets for added effect. Photo by Bill Rauhauser.

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Détente

Another example of automakers using women to embody the motherland, with a side dose of ethnic exoticism. At the height of the Cold War, this Soviet-built jeep was a consumer flop in the United States, but the fur-clad model was a hit at the 1973 New York International Auto Show.

Photo by Bernie Weis.

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Efficiency Incarnate

By the '80s, cars weren't sexy technological marvels any longer, and automakers had to hype other aspects of their product—like fuel efficiency. These models, dressed in the tasteful garb of the career women now flooding the workplace, oozed that practicality. Automakers by now were also realizing that the female halves of households were quite influential in the selection of cars, and "women buyers wanted professional narrators who looked and acted the lifestyle of the brand."

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Role Reversal

By 1985, this visual joke was ripe for the making, asking the reader to consider whether women react to marketing differently from men, and whether they're targeted differently, too. But maybe it's not such a joke. According to Krevsky, "By 2008, male models numbered 35 percent of the talent at the auto shows. Many of the men say women rarely make suggestive remarks, but smile with appreciation for a handsome face and rugged physique."

Image used with permission of Michigan Woman editor Sue McDonald.