TWO hundred yards away in the office of her sleek new VW dealership, Emily Bromage agrees with this assessment. "We are very focused on weekend sales which represent possibly 40 per cent of our business," she says.

She can talk as dispassionately about the industry as someone "who doesn't have petrol flowing in my veins," having been a management trainer. She first met her business partner, Mike Sharp (now company secretary and financial director) when they worked for Volvo importers from a regional office in Harrogate. She was regional personnel manager and he was business development manager.

Later she joined a Volvo dealership and Mike joined her there, but the business went into receivership. "I'd just turned 40," she recalls. "In this industry I was the wrong sex and the wrong age for employment so I decided to work for myself."

Then, backed by her husband, Bill, a retired electrician, she mortgaged the house, teamed up with Mike and bought the Audi and Volkswagen business at Layerthorpe, York, from Trust Motors for £700,000. "Volkswagen were only too happy to continue and be supportive because the dilapidated place was losing around £100,000 at the time. It was in the heart of the last motor recession"

Their combined skills hitched to ruthlessness turned its fortunes around, pushing sales up from just 40 new cars to 145 in the first year. This year their massively expanded company will have sold 2,000 new cars with a turnover across four businesses of £40 million and 200 employees.

Apart from acquiring dealerships in Hull, two years ago they built an Audi Centre at Centurion Park in Clifton Moor.

Then, having outgrown the original VW site in Layerthorpe they sold the site to Barratts the house builders ten weeks ago and moved into this sleek £2 million investment, a stone's throw away from the Audi centre.

But here, as elsewhere, it was difficult recruiting female sales staff because of the weekend work. "While often they start to work on weekends quite happily, they tend not to like it later and fall out of the system. Because of that there is a bit of a disparity. Possibly only 20 per cent of my staff are female."

On the other hand the reception manager who heads up the service workforce with customers is female and she has a female accounts manager.

But any females who decide to go for the top should not be daunted by men who were running a book on when they would fall by the wayside. Her message to all those who might have given her poor odds on success? "No message: I just smile my victorious smile. I don't get mad. I get even."