Dodge La Femme: Every Accessory Included With The 1955 Car Made For Women

A scene in the hit sitcom "Arrested Development" perfectly encapsulates Dodge's pitch to female buyers in the 1950s. In search of a new car, the show's main character, Michael (played by Jason Bateman), sees a pair of sunglasses and a cherry red windbreaker beside a matching Corvette. "They throw these extras at you because it's so impractical," says the salesman, lamenting at the ineffectiveness of the tactic. It works for Bateman, however, kicking off a series of hilariously poor justifications for his purchase. Unfortunately, this approach was unsuccessful when Chrysler used it to sell its pink Dodge La Femme.

By 1955, the post-war boom was in full effect, drastically changing the country's economic and social fabric. One byproduct of these changes, be it rises in female employment rates or the mass exodus of families to the suburbs, was a sharp increase in female drivers. To meet this change in demand, several manufacturers attempted to shift their marketing strategies — to mixed reviews. 

In 1949, Ford became the first car company to market directly to women, using slogans like "A Woman's Place is in the FORD." However, no company was as blatant and insultingly pandering as Dodge when they came out with the 1955 La Femme. In an egregious misstep by one of America's largest manufacturers, the pink and gold coupe's marketing focused more on its fashion accessories than the car itself. In doing so, Dodge created a disaster: A car designed "exclusively for women" that no woman wanted. 

One look at the Dodge La Femme, and you'd think the Mattel Company designed it for the Barbie movie. A spin on Dodge's popular Royal Lancer, the two-door hard top goes all in on the "feminine" aesthetic. Sporting a "sapphire" white and "heather rose" pink paint job, golden decals, and tapestry cloth upholstery laden with rosebuds and gold cordagrain trim, the La Femme makes a Mary Kay-painted Cadillac look as feminine as a monster truck. Ironically, Barbie's first car — the Austin-Healey 3000 Mark II — released some seven years later, was less audacious, and came with fewer accessories. This Barbie-esque design, however, is only one reason that the Dodge La Femme was one of the strangest cars ever built by Chrysler.

Sporting tag lines like the "first and only car designed for Your Majesty," Chrysler thought it created a vehicle that gave women exactly what they wanted. The problem, however, was that they delivered what women wanted in a handbag, not a car. Equipped with a wealth of fashion and beauty accessories "straight off 5th Avenue," the Dodge La Femme was all flash and no substance for prospective drivers. So what accessories did Dodge think would bewitch women into buying their limited edition La Femme?

What waited for its drivers in the backseat was even more symptomatic of Dodge's flash-over-substance approach: A rose, calfskin fitted shoulder purse designed with the "modern woman" in mind. And this wasn't just any empty-gesture accessory, no. Dodge outfitted their new Evans shoulder bag perfectly for any woman who wanted to add weaving through traffic to their morning glamour routine. 

Inside, Dodge included a powder compact and comb in case any of their new drivers wanted to touch up their foundation or hairdo while parallel parking. For drivers who were self-conscious about the loose change that might fall between the seats, Chrysler was kind enough to include a matching rose coin purse to assuage them. If the La Femme's drivers wanted to smoke in style while speeding down the expressway, she could bust out the purse's matching cigarette case and lighter.

With all these fashion accessories, it is a marvel that the La Femme didn't fly off the shelves. Maybe if they sold them in one of the era's vast department stores rather than car dealerships, they'd have had more luck.

If you took the Dodge La Femme as a representation of what plagued the minds of women in 1955, you'd think that rainstorms sat at the top of the list. Much of the 1955 hardtop is geared towards solving the pesky problem of storing rain gear. In fact, Chrysler built special compartments on the back of the front seats for that very purpose. Inside the compartment held all the accouterment any woman stuck in the rain could need, including a cape, hat, and umbrella that "match the lovely Orchid Jacquard fabric" of the car's interior. Clearly, someone at Dodge thought the first thing any woman asks when buying a car is "How will I reach my matching raincoat?"

So, what type of success did Dodge have including these "smart personal accessories right off 5th Avenue" in the vehicle? The answer is not much: By 1956, Dodge dropped La Femme's accessories and turned its attention to a juiced-up 218 horsepower Red Ram V8 engine. Unfortunately, this shift in focus couldn't save the rose-trimmed two-door, as Chrysler scrapped the La Femme just a year later. With less than 2,500 ever built, the La Femme was by far Dodge's worst-selling vehicle in 1955 — and a cautionary tale to car companies ever since. At the very least, it's proof that the way to a woman's heart isn't through her handbag, or an entire motor vehicle to match.