Donna mae mims biography
- Donna Mae Mims (July 1, 1927 – October 6, 2009) was an.
- Affectionately known as “The Lady in Pink,” the late Donna Mae Mims became a true Corvette enthusiast from the first moment she spotted one, a 1957 Corvette.
- Donna Mae Mims was an American race car driver.
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Donna Mae Mims Drove A Limo At The Last Cannonball Run And Was The First Woman To Win An SCCA Championship
Pink is a controversial color in the racing world. It’s a girl’s color—and we all know girls don’t race, right? Pink liveries for men are apparently emasculating, and women who drive pink cars? Well, they’re just shoving their femininity in everyone’s faces and subscribing to a stereotype.
But Donna Mae Mims just simply preferred pink.
Mims, born in 1927, didn’t always dream of becoming a racing driver. It was something that simply fell into place as her life began to flourish, a passion she only realized when she got up close and personal with a race car.
Throughout the 1950s, Mims was the executive secretary at Yenko Chevrolet in Pennsylvania. She and her husband Mike both fell in love with a 1957 Corvette that they spotted at a dealership lot. According to the National Corvette Museum, neither Mims nor her husband had ever seen a car like that before, and they bought it immediately. An added bonus, according to Mims, was that her in-laws couldn’t ride in it with t
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The Power of Pink: Donna Mae's Austin-Healey
Racers have a way of turning everyday fashion elements into pop culture icons. Steve McQueen cruised the pits at Le Mans in a white racer jacket, and it survives as a symbol of cool at the track. Jackie Stewart made tartan a valid choice for helmet decoration. And just try to imagine Richard Petty without his trademark cowboy hat.
Although Donna Mae Mims is not as widely known as these international motorsports heroes, in the world of American club racing she’s synonymous with the color pink. The Pink Lady put the motorsports scene on notice in 1963 by becoming the first female SCCA national champion.
She raced Austin-Healeys, MGs, Sunbeams and more, and she was an avid Chevy Corvette fanatic. She even ran at the 24 Hours of Daytona. Sports cars were more than a hobby for Donna Mae, who spent her days as the high performance manager at Yenko Sportscars.
The vivacious Donna Mae was an inspiration to Hollywood, too. Her real-life stint with two fellow female drivers in the 1972 Cannonball Baker Sea-to-
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Race to Equality – History of Women in Racing
By Michelle Cabatingan
My love of cars and wanting to race them began at a young age of nine years old. It started on a winter afternoon in 2004 when my dad came home with a brand new PlayStation 2, a gaming system that my cousin introduced to me. Every time I went to visit him we would always be playing the video game, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. I had been asking for one, ever since then. He set the blue box in front of the television, sat down with me and we started to assemble all the cords and inserted them into the television and the outlet. I pushed the “on” button on both the television and the PlayStation at the same time and waited for it to start up. The game that came with the PlayStation was called Gran Turismo 3, a race car video game. I was fascinated by the cars, by the shape of the cars and how they were driving incredibly fast. I played the game every day until it got to the point that I couldn’t beat my own fastest lap times.
As I grew up, I became more aware of the real race
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