"I just said that you're pretty. Even when you're covered in...engine grease, you're... No, especially, especially when you're covered in engine grease."
Mechanical inclinations have, for various reasons, traditionally been forte of men. The Wrench Wench is a girl who sets out to change all that. This can sometimes extend to pure electronic devices, but a Wrench Wench is more likely to be found with a blowtorch and ratchet set. She will always be confident about her own work, but because she's technically an enormous geek she sometimes has trouble with other things. She might also have Machine Empathy and can diagnose problems just by listening to the motor. She has been known to be Curious as a Monkey in the presence of new and interesting machines — or Constantly Curious, if inspection is impossible.
Usually too self confident to ever need a Beautiful All Along plot, but very likely to have at least one She Cleans Up Nicely moment.
She's often a MsFixIt. Can also be The Blacksmith.
When a Wrench Wench's talents go above and beyond the practical or realistic, she's also a Gadgeteer Genius.
The feminist version of Hood Ornament Hottie, where the woman may be dressed or posed as if she was the mechanic, but actually isn't.
She started studying mechanics at a very young age, and built two mechanical limbs at the ripe age of 11, making her a Child Prodigy. She is known as the Full Metal Alchemist's mechanic, and a good one at that. In fact, during the manga/brotherhood, she went to Rush Valley (city of automail) and made a name for herself, taking on an apprenticeship under Garfiel. Her automail had proven to be quite sturdy and practical in both series', especially during fights involving Edward (her most prized customer). Although her specialty is automail, she is also skilled in other mechanics, such as fixing engines and building ovens from scratch. Being an automail mechanic also requires her to be fairly medically skilled and with her parents being doctors, she is somewhat familiarized with surgery.Being an automail mechanic is a huge thing in a series where these mechanics give people back their ability to walk and move. Winry's skill is essential to the series' protagonist even being able to pursue his goal. Many are shocked when they first meet Edward Elric's automail mechanic— being that she is a cute girl. Hiromua Arakawa mentions in the manga that the reason she made Winry and Pinako determined working women in a male-dominated field was because she grew up in a situation where those who didn't work didn't get to eat.
Fio from Porco Rosso - who turns out to be the heiress of four generations of female aircraft builders. (Her great-grandmother wields a mean tinsmithing hammer.) The entire workforce of Piccolo Aviation are women, since the men are all abroad looking for work.
Nae Aki in Medarot Spirits; she never was anything near fanservicey, but, in another hand, had Ikki slightly fawning over her. Justified by the fact that she's the granddaughter of Dr. Aki, the modern Medarot inventor. Thing is, if you considers the series' existence at all.
Hilde Schbeiker from Gundam Wing, who has her own scrapyard and is quite proficient with computers.
Handa Suzu in Transistor Teaset.
Noël Kannagi from Sora No Woto. Also something of a Child Prodigy as she developed a biological weapon some time when she was younger (as in single digit), although she didn't realize what it was until it was too late.
Sky Girls has the twins Ranko and Haruko Mikagami.
Chinatsu from Jormungand is a villainous example. When she's not gunning people down as part of her hitman duties, she apparently likes to build complex mechanical torture devices... including one designed to shoot a bound captive in the knee. In the same spot. 27 times.
Betty Cooper, from Archie Comics, can be considered one in some comics.
Agent Boysenberry in Donald Duck comic books (the "Tamers of Nonhuman Threats" subseries featured in Gemstone's Donald Duck Adventures).
"Ma" Hunkel, the original Red Tornado from the Golden Age of The DCU, worked as a riveter during WWII. All that heavy labor probably helped with her right hook.
Maggie Chascarrillo, a.k.a. Maggie the Mechanic, from Jaime Hernandez's half of Love and Rockets.
As bizarre as it may sound, Disney seems to be taking Tinker Bell, of all characters, in this direction with her CGI movie. The reasoning is actually fairly logical—why else would she be named Tinker Bell? Plus, the novel Peter Pan is based on states that Tinker Bell is a tinker who mends the pots and pans. It's not like Disney pulled this out of nowhere.
The main character of C. E. Murphy's Urban Shaman trilogy is one of these, being a dedicated car enthusiast who restored a 1969 Mustang all by herself, and worked as a mechanic for the Seattle Police Dept. She even continues to use the idea of fixing a car to work her healing magics (fixing a broken windshield, replacing a flat tire, using windshield wipers to clear her vision, etc.).
Nadia Chernyshevski of the Red Mars Trilogy was a nuclear engineer in Siberia before her job building mankind's first base on Mars. Her skills in solving technological problems earned her the nickname "Universal Solvent".
Mercy Thompson, a.k.a. Mercedes the Volkswagen mechanic. She got started at 16 when she was sent to do community service fixing up cars, and now she owns and runs her own garage.
Samella Connel from Douglas Hill's ColSec Trilogy, although her particular talent seems to be mostly with computer hardware and programming.
Dagny Taggart, the main heroine of Atlas Shrugged, can't live without her railroad, is not too keen on pointless parties that other rich girls go to and has a very masculine dress code.
Ellie Linton, from The Tomorrow Series, is quite competent at fixing machinery, which, considering that she's a ranch-raised country girl, is Truth in Television.
Linda Connor, from Swedish SF author Anders Blixt's dieselpunk spy adventure Iskriget (The Ice War), is a trained mechanic with a solid professional reputation in her home town. She "saves the day" with her skills at several occasions during the story. She usually wears workmen's clothes and has a male haircut, both for purely practical reasons.
Kaylee of Firefly and Serenity, as quoted above. Kaylee actually joined the crew because the captain walked in on her having sex with the ship's mechanic in the engine room. She diagnosed the engine's problem while in the act, and fixed it on the spot when Mal showed up. He fired his mechanic and hired her as she was getting dressed.
There are numerous hints (including dialog by the first ship's mechanic) that her major motivation in having sex with him there was to get up close and personal with the ship's engine room and grok it, she being a technophilic homebody / ground-pounder up to that point.
Bester: Engine make her hot, you know?
(Later, after Kaylee fixes the engine in two seconds flat:)
Bester: What'd you do?
Mal: She fixed it! Where'd you learn to do that, miss?
Kaylee: Just do it, is all. My daddy says I got natural talent.
In "Shinding" when Mal and Kaylee go to a ball she cleans up and gets to wear a fancy dress. She becomes an instant hit at the party when the young men present find out that she works on engines and knows almost anything there is to know about them. Despite the fancy clothes, it is still a frontier world and a technical whiz like her is highly respected.
Turns into a CMOF when a young man asks her to dance and everyone else tells him to leave her alone, she's talking about engines!
B'Elanna Torres from Star Trek: Voyager. Although Star Trek engine rooms tend to be cleaner than a modern-day operating theatre, she does still manage to get covered in dirt and grease on a fairly regular basis.
Cally on Battlestar Galactica would qualify, if her personality didn't make her The Scrappy of the series. And if she didn't smell like boiled cabbage.
Seelix starts as one of these, before she becomes a pilot.
Theora Jones of Max Headroom is of the high-tech variety rather than the grease-monkey variety.
Abby Sciuto on NCIS falls into this category, especially when the team is investigating a vehicle-involved crime. Off with the white lab coat, on with the bright red mechanic's coveralls.
Juliette Burke in the 5th season of Lost (in Dharmaville)
Lacy Rand in Caprica turns out to be one of these, helping one of the other Soldiers of the One (who is apparently now her Love Interest) fix a motorcycle engine.
Ashley Hammond in the Power Rangers Turbo episode "The Turn of the Wretched Wrench". Conversely, this was the day job of her Japanese counterpart, Natsumi Shinohara from Gekisou Sentai Carranger: she's good enough to dismount a moving bike.
Ronny from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive. Always first in line to test out new weapons, her love of drills in particular led to a lot of Cargo Ship jokes between fans. Two seasons later, we got Gemma in RPM.
Stargate SG-1 has Samantha Carter, who builds Naquada reactors, which are like fusion reactors on steroids, in her office/workshop.
Sanctuary has Dr. Helen Magnus, also played by Amanda Tapping, who again falls under this trope. Very obvious in episode 21, where they get stuck in an old oil rig, and need to MacGyver their way out.
While we didn't get to see much of it "on panel," DG from Tin Man seemed happiest either drawing or fixing stuff with her robotic foster dad.
Kari Byron on MythBusters. Technically also falls under "real life".
In The Protomen (a rock opera based on the Mega Man series), Dr. Light's lover works in a factory. Keeping her safe from a dangerous job is part of his motivation for creating the robots central to the series. Of course, Dr. Wilyhas other plans.
The entire first verse from Felt's "Dirty Girl" is about this. Lines include "Standin' there holding that drippin' dipstick/With a firm grip, yet so delicate/And the way you took that orange oil rag and wiped it clean/Its guaranteed to get repeated in my dreams" and "Got so lost in your smile when you asked me what the mileage was"
Bananarama in their video for "Cruel Summer."
Rinhanna in her "Shut up and drive" MV seem to be this, but she doesn't do much though. Other girls in the MV also count.
Steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing have written a song celebrating this sort of woman called Goggles.
The girl in Dave Edmunds' "Slipping Away" video. She cleans up nicely at the end, too.
Professional Wrestling
WOW, a short-lived women's wrestling promotion populated largely with goofy gimmicks, had Wendi Wheels to fill this role.
Nora "Molly Holly" Greenwald and Lisa Marie "Victoria/Tara" Varon are both real life versions of this with the latter owning a customs shop.
Theater
In the Elvis-based musical All Shook Up, Natalie is this.
Also, Tron Bonne combines this with a fancy for designing robots, although generally she tends to design new electronics more often than fix old motors.
And then you have Geo Stelar in the second Star Force game, even though the character is a boy.
Jessie from Final Fantasy VII, who also displays a fascination with explosives.
It should be noted that the wrench part applies literally in her case. Her primary means of tinkering, along with beating people up, is a giant, meter-long wrench.
Like most character tropes involving the squad, Fem Shep can qualify for this one too - just make her an engineer.
Alyx from Half-Life 2 is a Wrench Wench and an Action Girl combined in one. Not only is she a good mechanic, she's also a godly hacker. Where she learned the latter (even touching a Combine computer is punished by summary execution) is a puzzle.
Keira from the Jak and Daxter trilogy. Tess is one as well, only her specialty is weaponry, not vehicles.
The kappa Nitori Kawashiro from the Touhou Project series; an earlier example is/are Rika/Rikako Asakura.
Moira Brown from Fallout 3, combined with Genki Girl.
Veronica has a bit of this going on as well. She can even function as a mobile Workbench that lets you craft items on the spot.
In the first Ratchet & Clank, one of these gives Clank an upgrade.
Licca Kusunoki in Gods Eater Burst fits this to a tee, complete with oversized gloves and a tendency to hug the protagonist when they do something stupid.
Wave the Swallow in Sonic Riders, who is the one responsible for building the boards for the Babylon Rogues.
When Starkiller first lays eyes on Juno Eclipse in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, she is working on his ship, The Rogue Shadow. The comics also show her working on other equipment.
Pella the dwarf, from Looking for Group. She fashions Rayd a replacement arm after the Black Dwarves dismember him while torturing. Rayd then uses it to "keep a promise" that he made them in a subsequent battle with the Black Dwarves.
Faye from Questionable Content recently entered these waters when she built a mini T-Rex that poops espresso, and was originally going for a two-ton T-rex with Hemi power.
Dora, too, has managed to do similar, but from a more computer nerd end of the spectrum, like fixing Pintsize back together after an unfortunate cake mix incident.
Marigold builds her PCs, has taken over the Pintsize fixing, is a webmaster as her real job, and seems to be rather skilled at all things computer.
Katherine Blanco from Survival of the Fittest version three was the best mechanic in her school until she was killed by a hornet's sting on the island.
Holly Chapman of the Spin-OffEvolution was one of these before being abducted, injected with Super Serum, and put into the game.
Loophole from Whateley Academy quite comfortably fits this trope.
Sharon from Darwins Soldiers used to work in the magnetic materials research division at Pelvanida. After she got fired, she worked as an electrician and a mechanic in Southport.
Gretchen Grundler and Ashley Spinelli in Recess. Spinelli was taught by her older brother how to work on cars and helped fix a broken down bus in one episode. "Regular, or ratchet?"
To a certain extent the Fireside Girls from Phineas and Ferb, though it's the titular characters who are directing most of their efforts.
Sari from Transformers Animated, in a way. Pre-upgrade, she's the Allspark's deputized Angel of Phlebotinum, then post-upgrade she shows a real talent for Cyber-diagnostics.
Molly from Oban Star Racers is a competent mechanic. She even figured out the problem with a pod-racer when it had previously stumped a professional.
Cover Girl from G.I. Joe (especially in her Devil's Due comic incarnation). After all, when your primary duty is as a missile tank driver, it pays to know how to keep your fighting vehicle in good condition.
Ahsoka has apparently taken a level of this over the course of the series' sporadic timeline; by the time of the Mortistrilogy of episodes, she's capable of fixing a badly crashed shuttle by herself and modifying it as needed.
Real Life
Rosie the Riveter from the U.S. World War II propaganda. And, obviously, all the female mechanics used in propaganda.
Elizabeth Hawes' book about working in an aircraft plant during WWII is titled Why Women Cry; or Wenches With Wrenches.
Kari Byron and Scottie Chapman from MythBusters. And now, Jessi Combs. Pattern, much?
Back in the day, Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth (now Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II) was one. She was trained as an army mechanic during World War II; she served as an ambulance driver, but British vehicles being what they are, she had to be trained as a mechanic too.
Rosie's Girls is a day camp for preteen girls that teaches, among other things, welding, carpentry, wiring, engineering, and presumably advanced badassness.
Photographer Dave Perry has made an entire career out of shooting models working on hot rods. He admits in the introduction that his inspiration was a young woman working in a desert junkyard.
Mike Holmes has made a point of supporting women going into construction trades on his shows Holmes On Homes and its sequels. He hired Corin "Pinky" Ames on air after she completed an internship with him, and Kate Campbell and Mike's daughter Sherry are regular members of his crew.
There are self-help bike repair shops in Germany (and possibly other places in Europe) where you have to repair your bike by yourself and only pay for the materials used. They are run by volunteers who help you if you're stuck, and many of these volunteers are girls who do this in their free time.
Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. In the first half of 1800. That's right: even before the first computer - she invented algorithms for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, which is considered the "ancestor" of modern computers.
In general, there are plenty of women in real life interested in mechanics.
