Two boys eye up an Audi TT Roadster while pondering the question: is car advertising sexist? They have come to the Motor Show to gawp rather than to buy. "Um, no?" says Darren, 19, from Stoke on Trent, a touch stunned by the demands of the question. His friend Jason studies my expression for clues. "Is it yes?" he says. Finally they settle on "Dunno, yeah, probably" and join the queue to have their photos taken sitting in the red leather seats of the sports car, alongside a woman of Viking extraction.
At first glance, the controversy that has come to the motor show this year - its use of an advert featuring a semi-naked woman beside the caption "The other way to your man's heart is down the M6" - appears to be entirely lost on its visitors. At 10am, the cavernous arena of Birmingham NEC is peopled almost exclusively by slow-moving males, some with camcorders, stupified by their proximity to the new Bentley and the latest Porsche. While music thumps out of the exhibitors' stands, a terrifying battalion of blonde-haired women sway gently in the blue-white light and distribute brochures. Asked if they find anything strange or objectionable about this, most male visitors shrug helplessly, opening and closing their mouths as if in thrall to a more powerful force.
That power, say critics, is conditioning and historical precedent. As other industries moved away from the sexist advertising of the 50s, 60s and 70s (albeit while subtly upholding its principles), car advertising has stayed largely faithful to the belief that most of the purchasing decisions are made by men and that, logically, you can't do better sales-wise than deploying a bevvy of naked women. At the launch of the motor show last week, girl band Atomic Kitten appeared for Rover, model Alicia Rowntree for Skoda and, most astoundingly of all, Darcey Bussell for Audi. "Darcey is a very Audi kind of person," said a spokesman, adding that Bussell had driven an Audi for six years. This would have been more convincing had the ballerina been pictured sitting behind the wheel of the car rather than hovering in a leather mini skirt about its bonnet.
It was while driving up to Birmingham last week that Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary and minister for women, had a minor fit on clocking the get-yer-tits-out billboard for the Motor Show and convened a press conference to brand it "rubbish", "pathetic", and particularly nonsensical since half of all cars are bought by women. At the Rover stand inside the NEC, Brian and Dorothy Holden are not sure if they agree with her. Both retired, they have driven from Dorset to browse for a new car. "I like to drive, but I'm not interested in the engine," says Dorothy. "Comfort is important. If you've got to lift yourself out of it, oh gosh."
"I like a functional vehicle," says Brian. "I've been a VW man for years, but they're slipping on flexible design." The gender divide on driving comes out in the Holdens' account of their journey up. While Dorothy comments broadly on the character of the journey ("Not too bad"), Brian shares details of the performance of the tyres and the minutiae of the timetable.
What time did they leave Dorset? "About 6am," says Dorothy. "Nearer five to six," corrects Brian.
I ask if they have seen the offending advert and Brian says nervously, "Oh dear, no, we haven't seen it." However, his wife says, "I've seen it." Was it sexist? "It's difficult to say," says Brian, recovering his memory. "The point is you've got to look beyond the hype."
"I'm sure they could have come up with something better," says Dorothy. "But you see that sort of thing all over, not just with cars. I switch off."
Dorothy's point is a counter to Hewitt's: why throw a wobbly over one poxy billboard when the whole Motor Show is awash with "hostess" culture? At the RAC exhibit, along with a call-out van and some blokes with clipboards, stands a gaggle of apparently random young women in Formula One boiler suits, nipped attractively in at the waist. At the Peugeot stand, a whole stage has been constructed on which female dancers jig about singing, "It ain't a question of pride." Becky Pendrigh and Sally Miller, partners in a London consultancy firm that works with the motor trade, stare querulously up at the stage. "It's got a lot better," says Miller. "A few years ago, all the car companies would have had stages like this."
"Dealing rooms are still very sexist, although head offices have improved," says Pendrigh. "It's ridiculous to assume that only men buy cars. Everyone knows that women run the household." Still, she says, Hewitt's point is "completely irrelevant" - "bizarre", in fact - when so many sexist images go unchallenged every day. "We've worked a lot in the motorbike industry," says Miller, "and this is nothing compared to that. They are in the last century, with girls in leather bikinis all over the bikes."
Nevertheless, there is something uniquely resonant about the bonnet shot, in which a woman achieves symbolic parity with such other features of the car as the twin exhaust tip and the illuminated door sill. If the main principle of sexism is objectification, then the bonnet-shot is its template. "Glamorous yet down-to-earth and equally at home in the country or the city," runs the spiel for the Skoda Octavia and Alicia Rowntree.
"I think it's out of order," says Jonathan, an advertising executive from London who has worked on the accounts for Mini and BMW. (Mini, incidently, is one of the few stands at the show to resist sexualising its staff, who are cannily dressed in unflattering orange Airtex). "The advert with the woman in the bra was essentially a 1970s ad in 2002. I think Hewitt's comments were useful: there is a hell of a lot of sexism about in the car industry. Women who step on to the floor of some car plants are warned to expect hooting, screeching, the braying mob. It's unbelievable."
The mistake that well-meaning advertisers make, says Jonathan, is in trying to counter this by pitching their ads specifically at women.
"It tends to backfire. A lot of the women who buy BMW do so because, without it being sexist, they like the aggressive image that comes with it. When VW Beetle made a woman-specific ad with a vase of flowers on the dashboard, focus groups found that the women felt patronised."
If Hewitt really wants to make an impact, he says, she should address the woeful lack of women in the car industry's senior management. "The only high-powered woman there has been for years has been Jan Smith, head of Mazda. The glass ceiling is firmly in place."
What do the women on the stands think? It is hard to get them away from their beady-eyed employers but, towards the back of the arena, I find a group of three stewards, as tall and blonde as Norwegian pine, on a break from the the razzle. "I think it's boring," says Janice. "It's how we earn a living, who cares." Her colleague, Miranda, says, "You look at some of these blokes and they're sitting in the front seat of a car with probably the best looking woman they've seen for years. It's sad. It flatters them. Men are stupid."
But does she think the use to which she and Janice are put is sexist? Janice says, "Nah, there are more important things." But Miranda frowns. "Yeah," she says, "it is sexist and it's crap. But that's the way the world is, not just selling cars." The two women return to their neon-lit podium, passing, as they do, a pair of models in red PVC trousers and crop tops with the words "Virgin mobiles" printed across their chests.
