Well and good...

At just after 10 o'clock on Friday morning Maha al-Qahtani swapped places with her husband, Mohammed, and took the wheel of the family car.

For the next 50 minutes, she drove through the Saudi capital, along the six-lane King Fahd Road, through Cairo Square, down the upmarket Olaya Street with its shopping malls, Starbucks, Apple store and boutiques.

"No one tried to stop us. No one even looked," the 39-year-old civil servant said. "We drove past police cars but had no trouble."

But I can easily (way too easily) see this as a great advertising opportunity for some car corporation. Ford, for example, can do a kind of clandestine YouTube thing—a Saudi woman filmed with a cellphone camera. She is dressed in a black burka. She has intense eyes. She leaves the home. She enters the Ford Focus. The shaky camera. The raw raps of wind. The start of the engine. The hands on the steering wheel. The determination. The road. The freeway. The ultimate freedom of driving. This is your revolution. This is the Ford revolution.