Girls Auto Clinic Owner: ‘I Couldn’t Find A Female Mechanic, So I Had To Learn’
Patrice Banks is now a mechanic, and the owner of a successful auto clinic, but there was a time when she avoided taking her own car in for routine maintenance.
“I was afraid I was going to be taken advantage of,” she says. “I was tired of feeling helpless and having to go talk to a guy.”
Banks, who was working as an engineer at DuPont at the time, thought she’d feel more comfortable with a female technician. There was only one problem: “I couldn’t find a female mechanic,” she says, “so I had to learn it [myself].”
She enrolled in night classes at a technical school. “I was the only girl with a bunch of boys, 19-year-old boys,” she says. “That was interesting. I was 31.”
Eventually, Banks left her six-figure salary as an engineer. She worked in a couple Philadelphia garages for free while she completed her training, and in 2016 she opened the Girls Auto Clinic repair center in Upper Darby, Pa., which is staffed by female mechanics. To make the shop more appealing and convenient for women, she also opened an adjoining manicure-pedicure and blowout salon.
Banks recounts her experiences and provides tips for car maintenance in her book Girls Auto Clinic Glove Box Guide.
Photo by Kim Paynter / WHYY
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