Paris’s 126-Year-Old Auto Club Still Says ‘Non’ to Women Members

Louis Desanges, the president of the 126-year-old Automobile Club de France, found himself in a bit of a bind in 2019.

Carlos Ghosn had resigned as the chief executive officer of Renault SA following his arrest in Tokyo, and later that year the car company had named Clotilde Delbos as interim CEO. Desanges’s club has traditionally extended honorary memberships to the heads of France’s main auto companies, but this time he couldn’t: L’Auto, as it is known, doesn’t accept women members.

“We might have been able to give her a card granting the same rights as a member’s wife,” Desanges said in an interview. “Even that would have been a first.” Luckily for him and his institution — the oldest of its kind in the world — Delbos’s reign was short-lived, and she was replaced by Italian-born Luca de Meo, who will be receiving his membership.

While far from the only all-male club in the world, L’Auto is among the few created around an industry whose top echelons are increasingly not exclusive to men. Delbos — who declined to comment — is the deputy CEO of Renault; at rival Stellantis NV, women head the Peugeot, DS and Chrysler brands as well as the supply chain and car-sharing operations. Tire-maker Michelin has four women on its 11-strong executive committee. In the U.S., Mary Barra heads General Motors Co.

“Having a club like this, stuck in the 19th century and closed off to women detracts from all the efforts made by the industry to open up to women,” said Elisabeth Young, who has worked in the sector for three decades and is co-founder and president of Women and Vehicles in Europe, or Wave, an association created in 2008 to draw more women into the fold. “It’s a very damaging symbol that projects the image of a car industry that is the preserve of men.”

That does little to shake Desanges’s resolve to keep women out of his club’s membership rolls. No woman has been able to join because the process needs the backing of two existing members, and that won’t been forthcoming, he said.

“This won’t change as long as I’m president,” the 74-year-old said. “I feel like three quarters of our roughly 2,000 members don’t want this to change, and I’m too democratic to impose something they don’t want. We have other opportunities to meet women in Paris.”

Created in 1895, around the time motorized vehicles were invented, L’Auto is housed in an opulent mansion in central Paris, overlooking the Place de la Concorde and rubbing shoulders with the grand Hotel de Crillon. Within its rarefied confines, Desanges is charged with upholding its traditions of savoir faire, discretion and privileged membership. The gilded institution counts Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard, Carlos Tavares, head of Peugeot and Citroen maker Stellantis, and Valeo SA CEO Jacques Aschenbroich among members.

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