Buying a car is the second biggest purchase most of us will ever make, but a lack of expertise can make it an anxious experience for many women. No more! Meet the female driver with a solution to make the whole process easy for EVERY woman

Annuchka Bowden of Drivher Dreams knows that, for many women, buying a car can be an anxious experience. So when she went to buy her first set of wheels, she had her big brother Mark in her corner.

She told him her budget and her list of requirements and then he did the searching for her using his motor trade connections as he is a qualified mechanic.

It was only after happily securing her Toyota Yaris that the penny dropped that not everyone is so fortunate. The 32-year-old wondered what do women do if they don’t have a mechanic in the family or access to an expert? Thus, the seed of a business idea was sown.

Eight months ago, Annuchka and her 41-year-old brother Mark decided to activate their idea of a service that could help women find cars without being taken advantage of. They christened it Drivher Dream.

‘Basically we’re just trying to make car sourcing and getting a good car easy,’ Annuchka explains. ‘It came about in a two-tier way. It was my own experience, in the sense that I have a brother who’s an automotive technician, so when I was buying my first car, it was just so easy.

‘I literally went to him with a budget. He knew the type of driving I’d be doing. I jokingly told him that I wanted a red one, and within a week I had my little Yaris.

‘That’s a couple of years ago now. I wondered, what do women do, especially if they didn’t have someone?

‘Mark, over the years on his side of things, would have had a lot of women coming to him after purchasing a car that shows up issues nearly instantly. We had one case of a girl, and within two days there was an issue with the car that was going to cost her €3,000.

‘It kind of naturally came about when the two of us were talking. I was like, “Well, why can’t we make it easy?”

‘Unfortunately, Mark said the majority of the time it is women who have these issues cropping up with their cars very soon after purchasing – things that could have been checked at the time.

‘In one scenario, my brother was saying the car just should just should not have been sold like that,’ she says of one vehicle brought to Mark. ‘It gets to the point then, do you sink more money into it? Or do you take a loss and move on?

‘It’s a big buy – the next biggest thing will be a house. You put your money into it so it’s not something that should be done lightly. But at the same time, it should be exciting buying a car, it should be kind of fun. You should be looking forward to getting something that fits your life.

‘I was so lucky and I just didn’t want to take it for granted, how simple it was.’

There is always a fear among women that their lack of knowledge about cars can lead to them being exploited or overcharged. Annuchka acknowledges this but says that Mark is scrupulously honest.

‘He would tell someone, “No, you don’t need to get that done with your car”,’ she says. ‘That’s, I suppose why he has people coming back to him for years. But he would know people in the trade and he says he does hear lads talking, and he would know of garages that do that.

‘I had a woman speaking to me recently saying that she had got new tyres put on the car and changed the windshield wipers. She brought it two weeks later for a full service, and when she got the list of things that they said the car needed, they listed everything, including the things that she had just changed.’

That lady then got her husband to phone the garage, and it was, says Annuchka, ‘a completely different story’.

As Annuchka concedes, she and most women have to take the garage’s advice as they don’t know enough about cars to challenge them. This is where having an expert on your side can save you time, money and effort. So how does Drivher Dream work?

‘What we would do is we basically just start with the chat, depending on how much or how little you know about what you want,’ she says. ‘Then we fit the car to you, and we go and look and we source the cars.’

If a client is very specific about their desired car – eg, if they want a Toyota Corolla – they will work to that brief but might review other options too.

If the client is more open-minded, they will show them three or four options that would suit their needs. They will do a runaround video that shows the car and if it gets the thumbs up, then Mark will personally inspect the car.

Finally, it will be serviced and verified before it’s handed over to the client. The fee for this work is €250, and the car will have a six-month warranty too. The service is fully refundable for the first 30 days.

‘I know it’s a different structure that we’re doing than the norm and it’s a normal thing for garages to build these prices in but I suppose we’re just doing it slightly different in that we’re doing it up-front,’ Annuchka explains.

They are also using Mark’s expertise to source from reputable traders in the motor industry.

‘I think even though he still fully checks all the cars before they’re given, there’s that extra security in it if he knows the people,’ she adds, ‘an extra little layer of security for everyone involved.’

Put simply, they will not suggest any car that they wouldn’t be happy to buy themselves.

‘It’s just about making it feel easy, safe, transparent and it’s to make everything simple, the way it should be,’ she says. ‘I personally think it should be fun, exciting, but also transparent, that you just you know what you’re getting.’

For women overall, gaining a better knowledge of cars would be beneficial, Annuchka admits.

‘Actually, it would be nice to have a little bit of a better understanding of your car,’ she says. ‘It’s not a scary thing. I don’t think I’ll ever want to know the ins and outs but I like to be curious about cars.

‘I think everyone’s busy, but to know the basics and to have it not be scary that if something happens, you don’t have to say, oh god, who do I call? Just to have a bit more confidence in it. I think that’s what we’re trying to do as well. I think a lot of the fear surrounding it as well is maybe just in asking the questions, I think a lot of the time it’s people making others feel stupid for asking them,’ Annuchka notes.

‘Mark’s chuckled at me a couple of times, then he’ll kind of explain it in simple terms. I suppose we’re trying to do that as well on videos, the most recent video being the difference between service history and vehicle,’ she explains.

Working with her brother has been great, Annuchka admits.

‘We’ve always been very close, we really have,’ she says. ‘I think why it works so well for me is that I don’t need to know the car side of things because if he says something, I trust him because I trust not only his knowledge but his honesty.

‘We’re very good in the sense that we’ve always been… I don’t want to use the word confrontational, but like if something’s up, we’ll say, “Hey, what’s this? Let’s talk.” I’m kind of an avid believer in let’s talk it out.

‘So it works. We both know what we’re good at, and we both trust each other.’

As to the potential to scale their business model, Annuchka can see possibilities but is happy to be patient for now. ‘I’m always kind of looking ahead, but at the moment because we’re so new, I want to see how women feel about it,’ she says. ‘I don’t want it all just to be about me, me, me. I want to see how I can I suppose pivot it, if I feel that women need it to be changed in a certain way.

‘But we definitely would like, looking forward, to grow it and to change the way of buying cars. We’re not downing on garages or being critical, but when you go to a garage, they’re going to sell you a car that they have. What we’re doing is we’re saying, “Let us find a car to fit you,” and it’d be great to see that expand and work.’

They have been trying to use social media to promote Drivher Dreams.

‘To be honest, it’s my first time on social media, so it’s very new to us,’ she admits. ‘We’re very much learning. It’s fantastic in the sense that we are a small business and we get to use it but we don’t have a big budget at the moment.

‘So to be able to use social media, it’s great. I find it quite intimidating as I’ve never put my face out there and neither did Mark. So, I suppose it’s all new.’ Despite her lack of experience, she is a natural communicator, and the siblings’ videos are excellent at demystifying car buying and potential pitfalls.

‘Because we’re so new and we’re providing kind of a different service, there is that little bit of apprehension like, why would I trust them and not the garage?’ she says. ‘[This way], we can put our face to it, and they can see us, it’s not just a voice on the phone and it’s not just a text. I love meeting people, but you can’t do that with everyone all over the country as much as you’d want to, and they can’t always come to you.

‘But to have that little bit of a of a link, and I think when people can see your face, it does add that bit of authenticity. It’s kind of cool, we wouldn’t have been able to do this 20 years ago.’

For Annuchka, their mission is simple: ‘It’s just to make it easier, to make it empowering. It’s supposed to be a new nice thing outside your house, and you spent good money, hard-earned money. The last thing you would be worrying about is whether it’s going to cause issues.’

Get more information at drivherdreams.ie