People · Betty Skelton · Chapter 5 of 9

The Fastest Woman on Wheels

Campbell-Ewald, Chevrolet's ad agency — 1955–1956

By 1955 or 1956, Skelton has moved from Dodge to Chevrolet's orbit, working with Campbell-Ewald — the Detroit advertising agency that handles the Chevrolet account and, not incidentally, the same agency responsible for turning John Fitch's 1956 Sebring class win into the “Real McCoy” ad campaign that helped save the Corvette's life. She becomes GM's first female technical narrator, presenting cars at auto shows with the kind of fluency that comes from actually understanding what's under the hood — a rarity in an industry that had, until very recently, treated women as an audience for cars rather than experts on them. She appears in Chevrolet television and print advertising throughout this period, the public face proving that a woman could know a car inside and out.

Daytona Beach — February 1956

February 1956 deserves the full telling. Chevrolet sends Skelton to Daytona Speed Weeks in a 1956 Corvette that has been personally prepared by two of the most important men in the car's early history: Zora Arkus-Duntov, the engineer who has spent three years trying to prove the Corvette deserves to exist at all, and Smokey Yunick, the legendary Daytona mechanic already synonymous with finding speed other people can't. Between them they fit the car with aluminum trim to save weight and a brake-cooling duct to survive repeated high-speed runs — modest, focused changes from two men who know exactly what actually matters at speed.

The 137.773 mph result isn't just fast for a woman — it's the second-fastest time posted by anyone in Production Class that week, trailing only a handful of the factory's own best-prepared entries. For a car that, three years earlier, GM's own accountants had nearly canceled for being too slow and too soft, this is exactly the kind of publicity Zora Arkus-Duntov had been fighting for since the day he was hired: proof, timed and public, that the Corvette could run with anything on the beach.

The trophy said Ladies' Class. The stopwatch said second-fastest car on the beach, period.

The press coverage that follows cements a nickname that will outlive every other title she earns: the First Lady of Firsts. It is, by this point in her career, simply accurate — and Chevrolet, having just watched a woman make their car famous on a stretch of sand, is not about to let the relationship end with one good run.