The website is clean and functional and tends not to marginalize potential male car shoppers with "girly" design elements. In fact, female drivers are never explicitly mentioned, and, for all intent and purpose, the site appears to be gender-neutral. Still, CarZen insists that its service is all about empowering women to make better car-related decisions by avoiding terms like "horsepower," "torque," "gear ratios," and other car jargon. Instead it focuses on "passing on the highway," "vehicle agility," and "rear seat comfort."

Personally, I give women more credit than that. Instead of pigeonholing them into focus group-tested thinking, online car resources should generally tone down the pseudo car guru talk and shift focus from performance to convenience (something we try to do here at Technoride). In this day and age doing away with both "horsepower" and "torque" in favor of simply "power" would serve both genders well. Likewise, "gear ratios", which bear almost no relevance to an average car shopper, should be reserved for avid auto enthusiasts like yours truly.

That said, I still recommend giving CarZen a try; not because it's well suited for women, but rather for its unique vehicle shopping features like the personalized Car Consultant, My Favorites section, a social networking feature called Ask a Friend, and a CarPages tool full of expert reviews, pricing, multimedia and yes, those 'scary' specs!

Interested in buying a car geek-style? Check out the PC Mag's The Geek's Guide to Car Shopping, Part 1.