Auto Repair Shop Caters To Women With Mani/Pedis For Customers

UPPER DARBY (CBS) -- A new business set to open this fall is about to spin the auto industry on its head by catering to a different clientele.

No more sitting patiently by the water cooler while your car is being serviced -- customers who visit Girls Auto Clinic Repair Center will be able to get manicures and learn a few things about mechanics while they wait.

"There's a huge stigma around women and their cars," noted entrepreneur Patrice Banks who will be opening up the shop in October. "I'm setting out to change that."

Banks has been empowering women for the last few years with her monthly car care workshops in Philadelphia, walking women through oil changes and showing them how to put in new filters.

Before workshops began, Banks empowered herself. She left her engineering job at Dupont in 2011 and enrolled in auto repair school.

Five years later the former self-proclaimed "auto-airhead" is now a "She-canic" who wants to make sure the women in her workshops and her new repair center customers will understand what's going on under the hood of their own cars.

This includes knowing how to manually pop their trunks. Banks learned this just the other day when her Volkswagen Jetta's battery died.

"It's a good case to bring what I learned from it and what I can teach women," said Banks.

She says she's excited to see her first shop -- which will have a salon space inside for manis, pedis and blowouts -- get off the starting blocks.

The shop will also employ female mechanics who Banks says are very underrepresented in the auto industry.

The first Girls Auto Clinic Repair Center will be located on West Chester Pike near State Road but Banks is hoping her business will go the distance and will one day have shops across the US.

In the meantime those who are interested in the monthly workshops can visit GirlsAutoClinic.com to sign up.

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In:
• Upper Darby
• Philadelphia