Lucille Treganowan

Lucille Treganowan was a business owner, television presenter, author and transmission specialist active in Pittsburgh between 1960 and 2007. Treganowan, a native of Iola, Kansas, moved to Pittsburgh with her husband and three children in the 1950s. After her marriage ended in divorce in 1960, she made the decision to remain in Pittsburgh and find work supporting herself and her family. She soon found a clerical position at a transmission shop in Penn Hills but knew little about cars and their operation. Treganowan later lamented having to respond to customer’s queries with, “I don’t know,” a regret that motivated her to understand the transmission business. After taking the time to study mechanics, she found a love of transmissions and helped to diagnose cars at the shop. She began offering “powder puff mechanic” courses for women at the local YWCA and received considerable attention in the press as an approachable and novel source of instruction. In 1973, Treganowan left to open her own business, Transmissions by Lucille, after becoming the first woman in Western Pennsylvania to receive a Small Business Administration loan. She operated the business for over thirty years before retiring in the early 2000s. In the 1990s, Treganowan’s knack for relating the principles of car mechanics in a simple, straightforward manner led to her own television show, Lucille’s Car Care Clinic on HGTV. She later made a guest appearance on an episode of Home Improvement and was interviewed on many notable television and radio programs, including Late Night with David Letterman, the Jon Stewart Show, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and after the release of her book, Car Care: Everything You Need to Know From Under the Hood in 1996.