With the Paris car show looming in the headlights, we thought it timely to devote a daily post to our occasional study of automotive marketing.

One the the great and enduring perennials of any car industry event is, of course, the Promotional Girl.

And despite the fact that Beauty Contest –baiting political correctness is a little long-in-the-tooth and that even liberated laddettism seems quaint and sort of nineties-ish these days, there seems to be no sign of car companies slowing down there search for the perfect female figure to sell their product.

Fashions change of course, and the looks sported by promo people ebbs and flows with the cultural currents — but our favourite era remains the late sixties and early seventies, a time when a naive sort of psychedelia seemed to infuse everything and knee-high boots were par for the course.

The concept cars from that era – all wedgy and space-aged — were fairly out there, and the look of the girls were pretty alien too. Here is a little selection of our faves.

If you want to see a genuinely creative contemporary artist tapping into the history of American car culture, you could do a lot worse than to check out the work of Keith Weesner.

Of all the brushmen currently carrying forward the flame of hot rod culture, he’s doing the work with the most depth.

Playing with the clichés without throwing the baby out with the bath water, there’s a real sense of texture to his airbrush work. Obtuse references and allusions to fine art are all there.

But best of all he underlines the perennial association with California, cars and girls.

Power to his line.

From the very beginning of motoring the female form has been used time and time again to sell, promote and market all things automotive. From the brolly dollies who parade on the starting grids of motorsport to the heel-clad promo girls who stalk the car shows, cars and (objectified) girls go together like Katie Price and pink ponies.

Strange, really, because in a world where women are pretty much as passionate and enthusiastic as men about their motors, there is a lag between the media reality of the car obsession and the actuality out on the streets. You never see car show ‘boys’ and when is the last time you saw a ripped male torso selling anything other than hair product or after-shave?

General sports punditry, once the sheepskin-clad preserve of the male gender, has with Gaby Logan, Suzie Perry and Helen Chamberlain etc infused a healthy dose of womanhood into the testosterone-tainted aether of sports TV. But will we ever get to enjoy a genuine counterpoint to the stonewash-hitching maleness of Clarkson, May & co? And no, Vicki Butler-Henderson just doesn’t count.

Does the fact that there is something fundamentally bloke-ish about the urge to list, opine, analyse, muse, pontificate and generally blather about motors, mean that the day that we see a proper female motoring anchor is still a long way off?