IN the 13 months since Nina Douglas started the new Dixon Renault dealership with five people she built it into one of the group's fastest-growing new ventures with a staff of 34 - eight of them women.

She exceeded all targets for sales from the 35-car showroom and throughput in the 11-bay service department. And all that at a time when the industry was suffering from uncertainty as the buying public awaited European legislation which was to force British car prices downwards. "It's been a team effort," she says modestly.

Perhaps, but that teamwork must have had something to do with her instinctive leadership skills - during her four years in the RAF she was WAAF administrator based at RAF Houlton Hospital and in her final year was a drill instructor for recruits at RAF Hereford.

Or perhaps she drew from her experience as a sales supervisor at Lillywhites in Leeds or financial experience as a broker for Norwich Union and Royal Life.

But she found her true niche when she answered an advertisement for sales people with the Rainbow Motor Company in Goole, a Ford franchise. "I was a natural. I enjoy selling. People buy from people.

"I don't believe in all that stereotypical nonsense of car salespeople wearing a sheepskin jacket with Glass' Guide in the pocket, but sometimes it is hard for people to leap the gap from myth to reality."

The only way to bridge that gap was to treat all potential customers equally, whether they were spending £1,000 or £20,0000. "That might be where we women count. We can really understand how hard it must have been for them to save the money to buy a car. Whoever they are and whatever they spend, it is likely to be the second most expensive thing they will ever purchase."

Nina sold at the Happy Driver Nissan in Millfield Lane, Poppleton (later AFG) for two years, specialising in contract hire and fleet; then worked for Perrys Vauxhall dealership in Doncaster for four years, and following management training, became car sales manager then general sales manager.

After a two year break from the industry as a personal financial adviser with the Halifax Building Society she returned to car sales, this time as general sales manager for Reg Vardy's Nissan and Vauxhall franchises in Leeds. Within three years she became general manager and then switched over to Dixon to blaze a trail as the group's first female general manager.

She is single. Has lived in Knaresborough for years. Life just worked out that way. But it also gives a clue to why there is such a paucity of women at the top in car sales. "It's a very time consuming job and most who come into management come by way of car sales.

"You start at 8.30am and finish at 7pm. You work weekends. Once women start to have a family it does not always fit in with their times but the real reason is that not enough women apply for the job!"