AS PART OF THEIR long-term relationship with a machine they depend on, people tend to anthropomorphize their cars, trucks, and work vehicles, naming them, and thereby assigning a gender. My father’s truck was Lady Bug. Mom’s black Chevy was Man o’ War. I named our Honda Odyssey minivan Penelope because, well, you know. At hand is the more difficult case of an auto maker building toward a gender—creating, by dint of thousand design-engineering choices, a vehicle that leans ever so slightly toward...

Source: Wall Street Journal November 29, 2019 16:18 UTC