Betty Skelton: Motorbooks

Explore the riveting story of a woman who defied limits, rewrote the rules, and lived life at full throttle—on the ground and in the air.

Betty Skelton was fast! She was also smart, fearless, and attractive—all of which she leveraged in her pursuit of speed, both as an auto racer and a pilot. Beginning in the late 1940s, a time when motorsports and aviation were the province of men, Skelton blew through all obstacles.

But there is a deeper, more personal story here, about how a woman from the deep south with modest family resources and no college education managed to accomplish all of the following and more:

• Soloing (illegally) an airplane at age 12 and earning her pilot’s license at 16 (the youngest person, at that time, to do so)
• Winning three straight Women’s Aerobatic World championships from 1948 to 1950
• Exceeding 421 mph in a modified World War II P51 Mustang fighter plane at a 1949 air show
• Setting altitude records in tiny Piper Cubs, the highest exceeding 29,050 feet, where she ran out of gas and had to glide down in sub-zero temperatures while flying barefoot (as was her custom)
• Driving Corvettes alongside Zora Arkus-Duntov and racer John Fitch to set nine records for speed and acceleration at the 1956 Daytona Speed Week
• Becoming the subject of national speculation as to whether she should be the first woman in space after training with the seven Mercury astronauts and appearing on the cover of Lookmagazine in 1960
• Shattering four land speed records for women on the Bonneville Salt Flats, the fastest at 315 mph in a jet-powered dragster
• Becoming the first woman vice president of a major automotive ad agency (Campbell-Ewald)

Skelton’s many accomplishments saw her inducted into eleven halls of fame, including the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, NASCAR International Automotive Hall of Fame, National Aviation Hall of Fame, Women in Aviation Pioneer Hall of Fame, and the Corvette Hall of Fame, to name but a few.

Created with access to previously unpublished materials and images, Betty Skelton: First Lady of Firsts! recounts an amazing life lived at the intersection of exploration and daring by one of aviation and motorsports’ most adventurous women.