Beneath the Hood: 180 Degrees Automotive’s Bogi Lateiner Local mechanic promotes vehicular knowledge By Ashley Naftule working hard to challenge that preconception.
Real life Rosies aren’t so fortunate. “I’ve been a technician for 20 years, on national TV, owned my own shop for 12-years,” Sarah “Bogi” Lateiner sighs, “and people still walk up to me and grab my hand to inspect it and say, ‘Do you really work on cars or do you just act on TV’? It’s amazing to me how much I still get that.” The notion that technical trades are “men’s work” is so deeply ingrained in our culture that even watching Bogi expertly dismantle and restore cars on Velocity TV’s All Girls Garage isn’t enough to convince some men that she’s the real deal. But the Phoenix-based Lateiner is 30
FEBRUARY 2019
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The name stuck. “My parents even call me Bogi now,” Lateiner says. “Sarah doesn’t even register with me as a name anymore; I don’t respond to it when people say it.” Bogi graduated from Oberlin College with a double major in Law & Society and Women’s Studies, with a minor in Political Science. But her heart wasn’t in theory— It was in tinkering. Bogi made the fateful decision to move west, planting roots in the Valley to attend the Universal Technical Institute. “UTI provided me with a great education and helped me get my foot in the door in the industry,” Lateiner says. Bogi didn’t know much about the school; she let other impulses drive her decision to move to Arizona. “The other schools were in places that were too cold. I had come to Arizona when I was 12 with my parents
Photos courtesy of 180 Degrees Automotive.
H
ow hard were Rosie the Riveter’s hands? Look at that famous symbol, and you’ll see a clenched fist, a curled arm, and fingers rolling up her sleeve — a badass maker, ready to get her hands dirty. But you don’t get to see her finger tips, the hardened skin on the palms, the telltale worn skin of someone who makes their bread working with metal and fire and grease. Rosie must have had powerful hands, working hands, like any good mechanic. Rosie got off lucky: She never had to deal with flesh and blood men demanding to see how “soft” her hands really were.
Born in Flushing, Queens, Bogi is an accomplished mechanic with impressive academic credentials. Growing up in New Jersey under the care of “hippie parents,” Bogi got her nickname while studying in Hungary. “Bogi is the name of a bug in Hungary,” she says with a laugh. “It’s funny, all the girls I was friends with there were named after bugs. Like my best friend in Hungary — her name meant ‘Snail.’”
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