Wednesday, August 13, 2008

What a ride

Betty Skelton Erde is 82 and lives in a retirement community where many are content to putter about in golf carts.
Not Erde: She drives a blazing red Corvette to match her red hair and really means it when she says, "I like fast cars."
An auto racing pioneer, Erde (Uhr-Dee) once was the fastest woman on Earth, setting female speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah's Bonneville salt flats half a century ago.
On Wednesday, she reaches a new milestone as only the fifth woman inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit.
She also becomes the 174th person honored; Erde will attend the ceremony in which Champ Car driver Michael Andretti and five other racing legends also are being inducted.
Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry's first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to set a world land speed record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed record for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.

You go girl!

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