How can you tell if a car was designed for women drivers? The seat covers are machine-washable but you can't open the hood! Ha!

Oh, wait, they're serious.

Next month Volvo will debut their new concept car (industry term meaning "car we'll never actually make but isn't it cool?") designed for and by women, a small and neglected demographic of car buyers that barely makes up half of the world's population. So what do women drivers want?

Easy to clean interiors, intelligently-designed folding rear seats, a race-car-style fuel tank that doesn't use a gas cap, parking-space sensors that tell you if you can fit into a given spot, and plenty of smart and sensible safety features. What'll those wacky chicks think of next?

What got my attention was the lack of a hood, something I'd never before considered to be an optional extra. Apparently women don't want to be bothered with maintenance of any sort so the car keeps track of its own servicing and actually places a wireless call to a local service station when necessary. I'm sure the car monitors weekend sales and compares oil change coupons before it calls, too.

This, to me, is blatantly sexist. I'm just as technically hopeless as any woman, and more than most.

I can operate a car key, inflate tires, and buy gas. I can even add windshield wiper fluid if someone helps me with the funnel. My patented car repair technique requires a stereo that's louder than whatever engine component is about to burst or fall off.

Fortunately I have a brother-in-law who's good with cars and is the finest, smartest, most handsome person I know. This lets me keep my unshakeable, nearly religious belief that once a car is running it should run forever without further attention from me, a belief that began with my first car: a 1982 Chevette that ran for years without any input whatsoever.

My friend Dan experienced this one day after I stopped to buy oil because the little dashboard light wouldn't go off, even when I turned real fast. I checked the oil manually, just to humor him. "See?" I said. "Empty. I'll go–"

"You didn't do that right," said Dan, automotive expert. He checked it himself and we both listened to the sucking sound of my engine frantically trying to draw moisture out of the steel dipstick. There followed a communications breakdown familiar to mechanics the world over.

"Chris, there's no oil in your car."

"I know, that's why I have to buy–"

"Chris!" he said, slowly and carefully, the way you talk someone off a ledge. "There's no oil, in your car!"

"I know," I explained just as slowly. "That's why I–"

"Cars don't go without oil! They don't! They freeze up and die! Or explode!" The fact that my car continued to operate anyway clearly offended Dan, like a NASA scientist who'd just discovered all the stars were just painted on. Meanwhile I put a quart in to make the light go off. Silly Dan. Next he'd tell me cars needed water or something.

He paid attention for the next few months, watching my car thrive without fluids of any kind, and then he borrowed it and drove around the block over and over just to make sure it was capable of running out of gas. It finally sputtered after the needle was buried an inch below the "E," but I'm convinced the car only stopped to make Dan feel better.

Since then no other car has met my expectations, until now. So I think the new Volvo should be marketed to all incompetent drivers, not just women.

Just make sure that when it needs servicing, I can set it to call my brother-in-law.