Donna mae mims cannonball rally
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SCCA's first female champ dies at 82
BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. -- Donna Mae Mims, the first woman to win a Sports Car Club of America national championship in 1963, has died. She was 82.
Mims died Tuesday of complications following a stroke, said Aaron Beinhauer, director of Beinhauer Family Services, which is handling the arrangements.
Per her wishes, Mims' body was seated behind the steering wheel of a 1979 pink Corvette for visitation hours at the funeral home in McMurray, Pa., Beinhauer said Sunday.
Known as the "Pink Lady" because of her preferred color for cars, Mims worked for Yenko Chevrolet and the company's sports car division and started racing in 1958, according to Beinhauer Family Services. Mims' association with the car company led her to race cars, including the Camaro, Austin Healey, MG, Corvette and Corvairs.
Mims participated in the original Cannonball Run, where her 1968 Cadillac limousine was wrecked with her teammate behind the wheel. She also became known as "Think Pink," "Donna Amazing" and "Free Maui."
"On the back of most of my cars I had 'THINK PINK,'" Mims, of Bridgeville, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette earlier this year. "I liked pink ever since I was a little girl."
A procession of more than 60 Corvettes is expected for Mims' funeral service Monday
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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 them.
Thankfully, Yenko Chevrolet wasn't just a dealership. They also had a division in racing. When her friends at the dealership realized the high-performance vehicle Mims had in her garage, they sta
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Donna Mae Mims
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