1960s Women Set Cross Country Car Race Record

In August 1963, Barbara Nieland and Paula Murphy (born in 1929) began the car race to drive a Studebaker Avanti from Los Angeles to New York in order to establish a new cross country speed record. Barbara Nieland and Paula Murphy drove the 3087 miles in 49 hours and 38 minutes setting a new record without breaking any speed limits. Paula Murphy had been a part-time race car driver since 1959, and by 1961 was the 1961 leading West Coast race car driver, with the most points. Paula Murphy lived in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. Paula Murphy's day job was as an engineering aide on the Saturn missile project, for the Van Nuys, California, Marquardt laboratory, and Barbara Nieland, of Whittier, California, worked as an industrial laboratory technician. By 1964 Paula Murphy had been dubbed the “fastest woman on wheels,“ having competed at Bonneville Salt Flats in a jet car, and broke her own land speed record for women with a 10,000 horsepower jet car that went miles per ho