‘No birds’: Bayswater Car Rental slogan used since 1950s slammed as sexist by Perth mum

An outraged Perth mother has expressed anger at the ‘sexist slur’ slogan a car rental company has used for some 75 years.

When Nicole Van Dijken’s son, age 7, saw a car with the phrase ‘no birds’ written on the door, he asked her what that meant, leaving her momentarily stunned.

The vehicle was owned by Bayswater Car Rental, which was founded in Perth in 1958 and adopted its famous slogan to gain a competitive edge.

The tagline was a reference to other rental car companies using young women to drive their rental cars to customers. The women were called delivery girls or ‘birds’.

Bayswater didn’t deliver – the customer had to collect the car – so was able to offer cheaper prices as there were ‘no birds’ to pay.

Ms Van Dijken didn’t know what to say to her son at first, “because this is something that really pisses me off every time I see it,” she said. ABC Radio Perth Jo Trilling.

“It’s a sexist insult and I’m in a position right now where I have to explain that to my son. Which I did,” she said, adding that the sentence should have been dropped years ago.

She said the slogan belongs to “a shameful past.”

“It’s not appropriate to refer to a woman as a bird and I don’t know why it’s still on it.

“I hate that they still have it there.”

The slogan is so prominent in the company’s branding that the fleet in both WA and NSW has a yellow arrowhead logo and the phrase ‘no birds…’.

The company is so used to being asked about the origin of the phrase that it now simply directs people to its website, which states: “Today, it may seem excessive to have rental cars delivered.

“But when Bayswater Car Rental started, having ‘delivery girls’ was a standard extra service in Australia.”

Brothers Ben and Arnold Kluck, whose father started the company, argue in a corporate video that the phrase “no birds” originated in a word for young women that many people now consider sexist.

Instead, they focus on it, meaning no frills, so the price is kept down.

But they still use the tagline and acknowledge that many people don’t know that the company is even called Bayswater Car Rental.

The slogan has been the subject of many complaints in the past, as has a poster that used it for years featuring a topless woman in a yellow hat and the slogan “no birds.”

At one point, the company ran an ad campaign featuring a topless woman’s back, a photo of Monica Lewinsky—who rose to fame in the 1990s for an affair with then-US President Bill Clinton—and the words “no frills.”

But the only charge to be upheld was in 2000 when an advertisement featuring a photo of a native boy and the slogan “half the rate” was found to violate rules on “defamation of part of the community because of their race’. ‘.

While rebranding the fleet of around 3,000 cars to remove the ‘no birds’ logo would be very costly, other companies have recently changed their names for similar reasons.

In 2020, Nestle renamed its Red Skins and Chicos lollipops to Red Ripper and Cheekies. “Redskins” is a pejorative term used to describe Native Americans, while “chico” is a Spanish word meaning “boys,” “children,” or “guys.”

Nestle said it wanted to ensure that “nothing we do marginalizes our friends, neighbors and colleagues.”

In 2021, Saputo Dairy Australia changed the name from Coon cheese to Cheer cheese after a long campaign by activists who said it had racist connotations.

Bayswater Car Rental received mixed reactions online to the latest tagline comment.

One man said, “It was never a derogatory term as far as I’m concerned.

“We used to call a girl a bird in a warm and friendly way…unfortunately that’s not appropriate in this crazy PC world.”

But one female commentator said: ‘When I was younger there was very vocal opposition to it and feminist activism found its voice – even my mother wrote a letter to The West (newspaper) to object to it.

“I can’t believe they still get away with using this slogan.”

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Bayswater Car Rental for comment.