Your favorite pickup -- with a woman's touch

DETROIT -- In an era when a woman leads the largest automaker in the nation, pickup trucks are still seen as a stronghold of the industry's testosterone-laden, good-old-boy past.

Men designed pickup trucks. Men built pickup trucks. Men marketed pickup trucks. Men bought pickup trucks.

And women? They did other things.

But now, women do pickups, too.

Next month Becky Blanchard, a 39-year-old mechanical engineer with an MBA, a husband and two kids, will take over as director of Chrysler Group's Ram brand.

She will be the brand's No. 2 executive behind brand head Bob Hegbloom. She will command Ram's messaging, marketing and sales.

She joins Elizabeth Krear, who is the chief engineer for the Ram 1500.

Meanwhile, at General Motors, Anita Burke is relishing her pickup-related accomplishments.

She is the vehicle chief engineer for the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickups. The Colorado was just named 2015 truck of the year by Motor Trend magazine.

She isn't alone at GM: Her colleague Jully Burau was vehicle chief engineer for the redesigned full-size 2014 Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra.

At Ford Motor Co., Jackie DiMarco was chief engineer for the 2012-14 F-150, before its 2015 redesign, while Alana Strager led Ford's "innovations team" that updated some features on the 2015 pickup.

And at Nissan, Diane Allen, the Titan's longtime chief designer, is preparing to launch the latest version of her full-size pickup.

Blanchard takes over as director of the Ram brand officially on Jan. 1, the latest in a string of promotions at Chrysler.

The job makes her Hegbloom's chief lieutenant, the person entrusted with executing Ram's strategy within the automaker's North American operations. It's also the first time she's worked specifically on pickups since early in her 17-year career with Chrysler.

Blanchard started with the automaker in 1997 as an engineer as part of a program that rotated her through the automaker's major brands and functions while she sought her MBA.

The rotating engineering role was the last time Blanchard had worked on pickups. She spent four months as an engineer in the body shop of Chrysler's massive Warren Truck plant in suburban Detroit.

Since then she's worked on Chrysler's fastest cars as well as its minivans and has spent the last several years with the Jeep brand. Moving to pickups, Blanchard said, was a natural evolution that mirrors what's going on among consumers.

"A lot of cross-shop data show people are moving from SUVs and minivans into trucks," Blanchard said. "You don't have to sacrifice anymore to own a truck."

According to registration data compiled by IHS Automotive, women purchased 15 percent of pickup trucks in the United States in the first nine months of this year.

Women make up a larger percentage (19 percent) of buyers of midsize pickups and a smaller percentage (13 percent) of buyers of heavy-duty pickups, according to the registration data.

All of the percentages are higher than they were in 2013, IHS said.

The fact that the percentage of female pickup buyers continues to grow is not lost on automakers. Through 11 months, automakers have sold more than 2 million pickups in the United States.

But the role women are increasingly playing in the engineering and marketing of pickups has to do with their abilities as individuals and with what's happening in the segment, Ram brand chief Hegbloom said.

"People use the vehicles differently now," Hegbloom said. "Seventy percent of the [sales] mix is crew cabs" driven for both work and personal use. "Women play a large role in those buying decisions, and that's an opportunity for us to continue to work on."

For Blanchard, the new job as director of Ram will mean some changes. For instance, after being told she was getting the job this month, the first thing she did was ask for a Ram pickup to take home to evaluate.

Blanchard admitted that she wasn't sure how it was going to go but like a growing number of women she was surprised by what she found.

"It was amazing; I loved it," Blanchard said. "It's really surprising to somebody who's exposed to the truck market for the first time how phenomenal that vehicle really is."