Mary Sipes, General Motors' vehicle line director for full-size SUVs, wanted to be sure that the all-new 2007 Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs would be female-friendly, so she gave an unusual assignment to one of her male engineers: Go to a shoe store and buy a pair of size-12 high heels.
That was the first step in what turned out to be the "Mr. Mom" competition in the auto maker's internal "Olympics" held last year during the development of the SUVs. The all-male contestants in that particular event had to wear a skirt, heels and fake fingernails. They were given a baby stroller and a baby doll.
Then faced with a row of Escalades, Tahoes and Yukons, they had to wheel the baby stroller up to the vehicle, unlock it, load the baby in a car seat without "hurting" it and jump into the driver's seat without ripping the skirt or a nail.
Sipes insists that these "mommy exercises" resulted in some practical improvements to GM's new and critically important SUVs. For instance, the new trucks have a rear-seat DVD entertainment system that can be loaded from the instrument panel. Some SUVs have systems that are loaded from odd locations such as the bottom of the right passenger's seat in the second row.
"Moms want to have control over that, especially if the kids are in child seats," she says. "With earlier systems, moms had to reach back to get the movie going."
Escalade buyers who opt for rear-seat entertainment can now load DVDs from a slot on the dashboard.
