About Mary
She's knowledgeable, fun, and easy to understand. And she's helped demystify cars for hundreds of thousands of people.
Mary Jackson is a car care expert who conducts workshops in the US and Canada, who's written the best-selling book Car Smarts, and who has a column called Women Auto Know that appears in newspapers across the country.
For 20 years, Mary has been presenting seminars for non-technical people (to help them better understand their vehicles) and for technical people (to help them better communicate with their customers). In 1983, she founded her automotive consulting and training company, Women at the Wheel, and has been helping the auto industry and women connect ever since. Mary speaks to audiences of ten to ten-thousand, on a wide range of topics that include car care, dealing with mechanics, avoiding car repair rip-off, safe driving, and getting the best deal on your next purchase or lease.
If someone would have told Mary as a child that she'd be a nationally known car care expert in the future, she wouldn't have believed it. Here's her story:
"As a kid growing up, whenever there was a problem with the family car, one of my five brothers would stick his head under the hood and start spouting off the diagnosis, sometimes with all four others joining him. Hovering in the background, I assumed that girls didn't need to worry their little heads about dirty old engines. My theory worked well for years — until I bought my own car. I soon learned to dread the inevitable trips to the mechanic. I never knew if I was being sold repairs I didn't need or paying too much for repairs that I did need. Whenever I heard a new ka-thunk coming from under the hood, I wondered if it was a $20 ka-thunk, a $2000 ka-thunk, or time to get rid of the ka-thunking car...
While putting myself through graduate school, I took a job in a local body and fender shop. It was there, among the paint fumes and twisted metal, that I had my biggest revelation. My five brothers really didn't know much about the workings of a car! And I also learned that a car is not a huge, unsolvable mystery. Once I started peeling away the layers and abolishing the myth of car confusion, I realized cars are logically built and are definitely understandable for anyone!"
About Mary
•
Seminars
•
Car Smarts
•
Media Spokesperson
Mary's Columns
•
Contact Info
•
Home