Fifi Scott must be the only woman who flipped a car while skidding around the track at Hughes Stadium. She did this while chasing Stan Mulock and 18 other men in an automobile race not meant for women.
Scott was running 10th when she flipped with five laps to go. It’s unknown what type of car she drove, though she liked Hudsons. Reports from that night in June 1955 describe all 20 vehicles as jalopies, battered 1940s precursors to NASCAR machines.
Fifi walked away. Her jalopy died.
If sexists in the audience of 2,800 assumed Scott’s crash proved women were bad drivers, they had Mike DeFuentes to consider. He flipped in the semi-main event.
I’ve always been curious about auto races at Hughes Stadium. Seeing the old horseshoe-shaped monument today, it’s hard to imagine 20 cars banging around the quarter-mile oval.
Now the surface is blanketed with soft, rust-colored rubber, ideal for track meets. In the 1950s, the track was clay, packed hard as concrete.
Motor racing promoters fired up old jalopies and new stock cars under the early NASCAR banner at Hughes. They ran midget cars and motorcycles. Drivers punched accelerators with minimal regard to safety, relying on roll bars and open-face helmets. Spectators ducked flying debris.
Then there was Fifi Scott. She was a stubborn pioneer for women’s access and equal treatment. Fifi pushed her way into events where she wasn’t wanted.
Hughes Stadium promoter Bill Hunefeld staged something called a “Powder Puff Derby” for women drivers. Main events were for men.
Fifi Scott drove in women’s races. But she insisted she was good enough for main events. She wanted to compete in qualifying heats, just like the boys. She entered. Went fast. And qualified.
As far as I can tell, Scott was the first woman to compete in NASCAR races in Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles and Phoenix. Six altogether. The Bee reported she “usually gave a good account of herself as long as the car stood up.”
Her tenacity angered the boys. Alan Ward, writing for the Oakland Tribune in June 1955, noted, “Over the protests of a dozen pilots, car owners and mechanics, Sacramento’s gift to western automobile racing will drive today at the Contra Costa Speedway.”
Sacramento’s gift was Fifi Scott. Born Louella May Eichelberger, raised near Seventh and P streets, she turned 29 in the summer of 1955. She’d been driving race cars for two or three years.
Those were busy days for Scott. She was raising a 10-year-old daughter named Vivian, pushing a cab around town for Union Taxi, and keeping house on Wilcox Avenue in Del Paso Heights for her husband, Dale Scott, a well-driller and auto mechanic. Dale Scott served as Fifi’s pit crew.
Pressure no doubt weighed heavily on Fifi Scott. By 1956, she stopped racing. Her final appearance seems to have been a destruction derby at West Capitol Speedway under the stage name Fifi McGillicuddy.
Racing archives reveal no further entries for Fifi Scott, Fifi McGillicuddy, Louella May Eichelberger or variations.
Fifi and Dale Scott divorced in 1957. Removed from weekends filled with gasoline, grease and exhaust fumes, her life remained eventful. She moved to West Sac, married twice more, outlived her first and second husbands, divorced her third. She died in 2006 at 80.
Today there are no markers at Hughes Stadium to honor Fifi Scott’s ghost, no mention of her accomplishments at West Coast NASCAR events. But she was remarkable—a woman who raced equally with men.
The Tribune’s Alan Ward supplied prescient outrage almost 70 years ago when he spoke his mind about Fifi Scott. His column was titled “On Second Thought.”
“She is so peeved at male drivers, owners and mechanics who sought to bounce her from the race before it started, she’ll do better than her best to humiliate the smart Aleck males. She is so mad she might not move over when another car, running to her left, tries to pass. That, chums, will be something.”
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
