One aspect of imagination that is disappearing in Romania, is the customization of cars! During the communist era the vast majority of families (well, men) had access to only a handful of car models, mainly the local variants of a 60' Renault we called Dacia. Since everyone had more or less the same car, and standard accessories and colours, many added all kinds of interior decorations: crocheted panel covers, hand sewn seat covers, and various saints and folkloric figures glued inside, oh yes and when I was a kid everybody needed to have one of these chinese animal dolls with bobbing heads, mostly cows. Who knows, maybe women participated to car culture during that era!

Men were the drivers, despite significant equality in the workplace compared to the west; today there are many school cars in the streets, mostly with women learners: besides the culture changes, perhaps their income has risen to allow more people access to cars.