With women now numbering well over 50 percent of all graduating seniors at major universities, you’d think manufacturers and their ad agencies would do a better job appealing to them. College grads have more buying power over the course of their lives, even if current economic conditions ensure a tough decade for 20-somethings. In recent months, ads from both Chevy and Ford have been put under my nose by rather well-educated young women, graduates of various professional schools.

The first ad brought to my attention? Chevrolet Equinox in Vogue, the issue with French actress Marion Cotillard on the cover. (Follow the link, then scroll down to a slide show of Cotillard’s spread in Vogue.) A two-page spread showing the car’s instrument panel (IP) photographed point of view (POV), with the Manhattan skyline in the distance, I’ve posted it below. First point? Ah, you’re not in Manhattan, but Jersey. Next? Oh, there’s a Manhattan brownstone in the rearview mirror, when in fact you would have an empty Jersey parking lot in the mirror. But wait, there’s more. Though women will tell you they WANT a spot in a vehicle to place a purse, apparently they don’t want to read lines like, “We’ve given the center console enough room to stow a handbag… .” Perhaps better to show than tell. The Equinox ad targets fans of Sex and the City, as the pull quote is ”Built for Blahniks,” lifted from that insightful arbiter of national taste, Time.

The ad is pathetic for more than its copy. It’s obviously a construct with the IP photographed in-studio, or even generated in virtual space with a wire frame, the Manhattan skyline then dropped into place. And this typically crude Detroit pastiche is presented in Vogue? To the halfwits at the Chevy agency, I say this: Check the photo gallery with Marion Cotillard. Highly artistic, beautifully art directed, sexually provocative to the rare male who might be shown the feature (I sure liked it)—in short, classic Vogue. It’s aimed at women with elevated tastes, who possess an understanding of fashion, art and design, and who might have the money to buy the fashions and cosmetics advertised, if not the true haute couture clothing. Vogue ain’t Cosmo, guys. When you cooked up this ad, you were thinking like men from Sterling Heights, Michigan, and not from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. You let budgets force a series of stupid decisions. But the women you’re trying to attract? They’re enjoying the art and design of Vogue. Why don’t you try a bit of it yourself? You know, hire a real fashion photographer, or a car shooter with artistic capability. Instead of pedantically showing the instrument panel—I can hear former GM exec Bob Lutz yammering about how “we’re selling product here”—why don’t you place the Equinox in a tableau that fits the creative standards of Vogue? Show the vehicle as part of someone’s life, not as a set of components, or a hackneyed attempt to reach Sex and the City fans. You could even be somewhat predictable and place it next to a Monet-inspired haystack at dawn or dusk. But then, not everything works with a wire frame and stock photos. And the message this hashed together ad sends is clear: Chevy has no sense of style and no cultural depth, so why would you want to buy the Equinox? Unless you think the readers would be interested, and you create ads that will appeal, stick to Ladies Home Journal or Parade with ads like this.

The saddest component of this story and the reaction? Missed opportunity. The afternoon this ad was presented by a professional woman: Stanford, Hastings, 31, worked in Europe, New York, and LA, artistic understanding, fashion-conscious, a sensible WASP who would be open to any vehicle she believed was solid, safe, reliable, and a good deal, drives the Honda that carried her through law school. She was along for the afternoon. We’d just left a movie theater (brilliant Italian movie with the uninspired title I Am Love, with British actress Tilda Swinton in the lead), I needed to top off the gas tank and, right on cue, an Equinox appeared at the Chevron station. I pointed out the Equinox to the woman, then stepped out to fill the tank. I gathered these comments on the way to dinner: “I like it. It’s more upright. It doesn’t have those weird little windows like that ugly Accord wagon thing you pointed out earlier [editor’s note: she means the Crosstour, which she hates]. I bet you can see out of it. I like the design.” As the conversation rolled along, she added this: “I took mom to my Honda dealer for her CR-V. I think the guys at those kinds of dealers, Ford and Chevy, would treat me like a stupid woman.”

And how can you change that perception with clumsy pastiche ads in Vogue? Reminds me of the Dodge La Femme–ham-fisted.

Where the Equinox ad was deemed a bit patronizing and clumsy—the women in my informal poll LIKED the idea of a center console pocket that can hold a huge purse, but didn’t want to be told about it in a patronizing way—a series of Ford TV ads was viewed as an utter and complete insult. And man, do I mean an insult. If Ford thinks they will convert any of these women into Lincoln owners after they’ve seen the Dirty Jobs ads, they need to lay down the crack pipes.

I gathered reaction on the Dirty Jobs ads promoting Escape and Edge. Mike Rowe, who sang professionally with the Baltimore Opera before finding a new career in TV, is the host of the cable TV hit show, Dirty Jobs. In these ads, he comes across as condescending and insulting toward women, though I suspect he doesn’t mean to be. Now, if this were a regional or local dealer ad campaign for the Midwest and Plains states, maybe the south, Ford might get away with this, though I’d like to think women anywhere in America wouldn’t appreciate the messaging. But on a national level? Shown to women with professional degrees? Are you kidding me? It shows how utterly out of touch Detroit is. All the more disappointing because Jim Farley, who heads up Ford marketing, earned his MBA at Stanford. Hey, Farley? You once worked at Scion. Well, many of your fellow graduates of “the farm” are unimpressed with the ads.

In the first ad, Mr. Dirty Jobs speaks to the confusion of the female, who cannot choose between Edge and Escape. In the second ad, we see the idiot female lunging back and forth between the two vehicles in the Ford showroom as Mr. Dirty Jobs commentates. HA HA HA. Look at the confused bubblehead female. Yeah, OK, this ad will appeal to many engineers and marketing humps I used to work with in Dearborn, guys who would consider attending a foreign film in Royal Oak or Ann Arbor as an indication of homosexuality, but the ad ensures that when my friend the young lawyer needs to replace her Honda, it won’t be with the very nice (and I am sincere in this comment) 2011 Ford Explorer I saw a couple of weeks ago. If you insult women who are capable of writing the check, how do you sell these vehicles? And if ever you want to meet a practical, sensible group, it’s this segment of the population. Due to the burden of student loans and the current economic condition of our country, most of them have little interest in expensive show-off cars. They’re perfect candidates for the new Ford Explorer CUV, assuming it’s well made.

Worse yet, Mr. Dirty Jobs is actually INSIDE a Ford dealer in this ad, reinforcing the perception that domestic dealers are populated with Neanderthals, who will be condescending toward women, trying to take advantage of them. Is this a wise approach, Mr. Farley? Or did your lieutenants even think it through? You’ve clearly forgotten all you learned at Toyota, Lexus and Scion, where ads are positive and, ummm, gender-neutral.

Admittedly, PT Barnum was right about never going broke under-estimating the taste of the American public. And maybe Ford marketing guys are accepting that they will never get these young professionals. In California terms, Ford is a Fontana product, not beach town or Pasadena. Sad reality, as I can imagine myself recommending the new Ford Explorer if the quality proves out. I’ve recommended the Taurus as an option to folks exploring family sedans.

But these ads also blunt a truth recently expressed by an old friend who once worked with Ford. He’s not a wordsmith, so I had fun with his initial misstatement: “Ford is a completely classless company.” I told him that though I agree many Ford managers I’ve dealt with proved completely classless, what he really meant was that Ford transcends socio-economic boundaries, primarily because a Ford F-series is a fine product, an excellent bit of industrial design, and possesses a trait most Americans admire: honesty. And Ford has heritage cars that appeal across the American social spectrum. Who wouldn’t want the 1966 Mustang convertible painted in Porsche Guards Red owned by the Cars In Context IT guru? Warren Buffet would be happy to cruise that beauty. The same can be said for a Chevy pickup. An F-series is like Levis: rich or poor, they’re an honest statement and perfectly acceptable damn near anyplace. But Ford blows that potential when they run ads that mock half the population.

This fear and loathing of car dealerships in general and domestic dealerships in particular is fostered by ad campaigns like Ford’s. The women polled for this In Focus piece found validation in the ads, validation of their negative views of car dealers in general. They also immediately concluded the ads were aimed at males, not females. Gee, no kidding.

Over the coming decades, we can’t ask Ford and GM to compete against the high-end Germans or Japanese brands for the dollars of these young women. But oddly enough Toyota and Honda ads are for the most part viewed as positive. They show happy people driving Camrys and Accords. They do not portray either men or women in a negative light. They show ownership as a positive experience.

The women polled all loved the current BMW ads, which show men and women as equals, taking joy in their vehicles. One ad for a domestic product that several women told me they really like? The new Jeep campaign: What we make defines us. We used to be great, and we will be great again, starting now. When I mentioned that the Jeep Grand Cherokee was so good that the Germans used its pieces to make the new M-class before dumping Chrysler, they were intrigued. For a lady doctor in the Rocky Mountains, I’d recommend taking a look at the Grand Cherokee, along with a Sequoia and a Subaru (she’s not much into cars, loves the little Corolla she has driven through all phases of her medical training, and would likely trust the Toyota brand, or go for that crunchy granola Subaru image). And all women in the polling population appreciated the Ken Burns style of the Jeep ad, evoking the greatest generation, for whom most of these women have a sense of reverence, if not by family connection then through historic appreciation fostered by their educations. They all liked the message sent by this ad, which also fits difficult times.

Detroit, take a hint: travel beyond the Rouge River sometime. Dearborn is not actually the center of the universe, nor is the Ren Cen.