Amidst thousands of car blogging/vlogging petrolheads it’s hard to stand out from the masses. In the early years of this form of journalism being female was a way to get noticed. But that time has long gone, thankfully. Elisa Artioli was featured in the ‘Road tripping with …’ section of this website before. Now lets hear from our favorite Dutch petrolhead ‘femmes’ and from Rianne Bergman in particular!

Femme Frontaal – best translated as ‘a woman who acts head-on’ – started in 2011 and is a Dutch online magazine about the female perspective on cars. Not the car performance, but the broader driving experience and a bit of human interest is what this platform is about. Femme Frontaal is a subsidiary of marketing agency Daily Drive Media which offers a specific view on demographic thinking.

Besides the mandatory reviews of cars, like this review of the Alpine A110, the magazine has more to offer. Lifestyle pages, blogs and vlogs and racing are all covered. And, stressing why they are our favorite, they write about road tripping.

Femme Frontaal is run by Odiel Mennink (also owner of Daily Drive Media). She’s well known in the ‘old boys’ automotive industry in The Netherlands and she’s one of the jurors for Company Car of the Year 2020 and Women’s World Car of the Year.

For the first few years of Femme Frontaal Odiel was the main author and editor of content but since 2015 she’s hired a team to add content and photos to the online magazine. One of the latest to join the Femme Frontaal team is Rianne Bergman. She was hired as review editor. But first of all Rianne is a race car driver for Lohuis Auto Sport. In 2016 she was recognized by autosport.nu as one of 5 great talents in Dutch motorsport; a group in which also Max Verstappen was mentioned…

In her early twenties, Rianne is a real jack of all trades; next to being part of the Femme Frontaal team, racing for the PTC-Cup, racing ‘The Beast’ (Stayfast DW16, sponsored by oil and grease specialist TSL) and teaching advanced driving she’s a professional hair dresser and she owns a hair salon, which she named, quite aptly, Salon Pole Position.

In this versatile lifestyle it’s hard to find time to travel for leisure. Road tripping is the best way to relieve the pressure of a busy schedule though. We’ve asked Rianne some questions about this pastime activity.

She starts. “A road trip is special to me because it means adventure is ahead. It’s all about creating memories that will never fade. Still, I can’t name my ‘favorite’ road trip. I’ve travelled so much, both professionally and for leisure. For instance, I have fond memories of a trip with our racing team on tour to Spa-Francorchamps with joy and many laughs but also with excitement building up for the race. It’s such a great feeling when you are able to travel with a team like that!”

“Then there are press trips for Femme Frontaal which take me all across Europe in different types of cars. When it comes down to vacation, touring the beautiful island of Curaçao in a rental all by myself comes to mind immediately. It was awesome!”

“Still, I’ve got some things on my bucket list. What I really, really would love to do is fly to Australia some day to travel around with a camper! That would be a dream come true! In other circumstances, when a road trip is focussed on driving fast cars or sports cars, my absolute favorite car is a BMW M3. Followed by the Dodge Ram and then by the Mustang.”

“When it comes to driving, I have to admit that I really like to travel alone. But on a road trip it would be really cool to go with my best friends. Then those special stories that we have experienced together earlier come up and so is the laughter about these stories! It would be a lot of fun to do that!”

“Of course, music is important on a road trip. I love music, I listen to music all the time myself. Mostly to new entries of hitparades like Top 50. I think it’s really great to drive a good deal on curvy roads through beautiful sceneries that I haven’t seen before, with that superb music pumping though the speakers!”

Rianne finishes with a red hot tip for Bends and Curves road tripping. “If you ever ask yourself where to go next, consider the back roads near Marseille. In my opinion, it’s one of the most beautiful areas in France!” We’ll take note of that, Rianne!