'Mother Proof' Car Reviews

When you are looking to buy a new car, do you find all the technical information available just so much mumbo-jumbo? Any idea what all those facts and figures mean when you're driving to the mall?

The Early Show correspondent Melinda Murphy has the story of a woman who's translating it all into plain English.

Watching Kristin Varela on her morning routine, you might think she's going about the business of a stay-at-home mom: Driving to the supermarket; taking her oldest daughter to school; picking up the dry cleaning; but what we might call errands, Varela calls business research.

"You know, I'm on this mission," she says. "This quest for the quintessential mom-mobile, and that drives me."

Varela is the founder of motherproof.com, a Web site offering a different kind of car review.

She explains, "Mother Proof is a print column and Web site focusing on new car reviews for women in general and mothers in particular; entertaining car reviews, too."

With lines like: "The strange placement and weird ergonomics of the parking break and gear shifting thingy (that's the technical term, by the way) throw me for a loop."

It is obvious Mother Proof is not for your typical gear-head. Mother Proof was born from the frustration of a mom looking for a new car.

Varela says, "My first step was to research them online; read car reviews - narrow down my choices that way. And I really couldn't find any information that was pertinent to me in my everyday life as a mom."

She found that the information in a typical car review (displacement – "Don't know what it is," she says - compression ratio -"Could care less," she says - horsepower –"Not interested," she says) isn't really important to mothers.
For Varela, the important things on a car aren't the features under the hood. Loading her daughter into the car, she says her pet peeve with smaller cars is that she has to duck under the roof line.

She says, "Numbers don't mean a lot to me when I'm driving a car. I really need to know how easy it is to load children in and out of, how functional the storage compartments are. Those things."

And she has a checklist for all those things.

"Four pages of notes, with each car," she says.

As a member of the Automotive Press, Varela gets to "borrow" cars from manufacturers for two weeks, and put them through their "mommy paces." Then she writes her mommy review.

"It's about life," she says. "I drive these cars in my regular life and I bring that experience with me in the reviews. So I sit down and write the review as if I were talking to a girlfriend over coffee."

Varela admits that she knew very little about cars before she began Mother Proof. But now she has tidbits she thinks every parent should know.

"Leather seats are a godsend for parents," she says, "Baby spit-up, spilled milk, sticky crumbs, they all wipe right off of leather seats."

So far Mother Proof has reviewed more than 30 cars. Among the favorites?

She says, "The Volvo XC90; new in 2005 is the Ford Freestyle, which we really enjoyed; and the Pacifica."

On the day The Early Show visited, Varela was testing the Nissan Quest, an SUV she liked for its grocery hooks, its storage compartments, and its automatic sliding door (though she said both doors should be automatic).

She says the car is really mom-friendly. It's got places for your drinks, CDs, cell phones, and purse holder. They are features Varela says are very important because more important than the kids being comfortable is that the mom is comfortable, she says.

"Happy mom means happy family," she notes, laughing.

With her reviews available for other moms, Varela just might be making families everywhere a bit more cheerful.

Varela is hoping to expand Mother Proof to include reviewers with kids of all ages in order to give a broader perspective.

Motherproof.com is just getting started, but Varela is hoping to expand the business to include consulting dealers on what moms want to buy.