A half-century after marketing Hot Wheels for boys, Mattel makes a gender bender move and puts girls in driver's seat with the company's new Polly Wheels line of die-cast racers. The South Florida Sun is just one of the outlets to jump on this sparkly pink ride.

The diminutive Mandy Russo does not look like someone you would see at an auto dealership as anyone other than a potential customer, but the looks of this 26-year-old are deceiving. The Pittsburgh Tribune has posted a bio of this female assistant service and warranty manager responsible for directing the work plans for a team of five mechanics.

Kitty Van Bortel started with a $500 investment selling used cars from her front lawn, and now Working Woman magazine has selected Van Bortel Subaru as a Top 500 Woman-Owned Business for four years running;  in 2003 she received the Alfred University College of Business Galanis Award for Excellence in Family Business. Van Bortel supports many non-profit organizations in the area including Camp Good Days and Special Times, the Susan B. Anthony House, Rochester Women's Foundation, AIDS Rochester, and Quad A for Kids.. Read the in-depth interview with entrepreneur Kitty Van Bortel at Business Strategies Magazine online.

If women were not able to dismiss the evidence of their senses, then car mechanics the world over would be buried beneath the avalanche of automotive repair work that would occur… Or so says Alan Linda in this humorous perspective on how we do or don’t diagnose the sounds our vehicles make.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tells us that teen drivers are more than four times as likely to be involved in vehicle crashes as compared to adult drivers. Sixteen year olds are at the highest risk. Lou Ann Hammond considers the use of GPS monitoring systems to help track teenage drivers in her blog at carlist.com.

Education is where Ford believes it must make its biggest investment; because of this perspective, Robert Garcia, a senior at the Advanced Technology Academy in Dearborn, is getting an early taste of work in the real world. Jim Vella, director of the fund, says it's critical that Ford invest in programs like PAS. "We're really happy and proud that even in a difficult time, we are able to contribute," Vella says in this article at the Detroit Free Press. "I always get asked how the company can afford to do this at this time. We believe it makes good business sense."

Celebrate women’s history month with this “censual” report on “Women by the Numbers” at infoplease.com Find out everything from population and earnings, military and marriage, as well as education, voting, and business statistics.

Traditionally testosterone Dodge gains women fans using sporty offerings and new styling to boost line's appeal. Read more about how the Chrysler Group brand's new sporty offerings are helping boost the brand among female buyers in this article from boston.com, New England’s largest automotive resource.

NASCAR is a sport that is always evolving. With technology advances, safety advances, fan bases getting larger, and the politics of the sport, things change. Hattiesburg American auto racing columnist Celita Turner believes the same can be said for women working in NASCAR - times are changing.

If you only remember one thing from today’s carnival, let this be it: Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you have to! We learned this from carcare4usgirls.com, a site that offers step by step video tutorials on all major aspects of general car care promising If you take good care of your car you can travel worry free or more importantly your family and friends can travel and you will be worry free!  Their car care training courses are for sale on CD-rom and are intended to help us girls understand how to take better care of our car!

That’s it for this week! Thank you for all of your submissions! Make sure to submit next week! Please remember to submit your article using the online form or by emailing Breanne at Breanne@askpatty.com.