[VIDEO] Celebrating 50 Years of Owning Betty Skelton’s 1956 Corvette NASCAR Racecar

Former GM engineer Bill Tower and his wife Betty were honored earlier this month as friends and family gathered at Stingray Chevrolet in Plant City, Florida to celebrate their ownership of the 1956 Corvette NASCAR racecar that was famously driven by the “First lady of firsts,” Ms. Betty Skelton on the beaches of Daytona. On display in the dealership next to a giant Christmas Tree was the 1956 Corvette wearing its original 1956 NASCAR livery.

Special guests at the event included longtime friend Joey Chitwood Jr of the Chitwood Thrill Shows and eight-time Emmy winner Pam Miller who is considered the expert on Betty Skelton. While many today probably don’t know who Betty Skelton was or what she accomplished, look for the documentary on Betty Skelton and her life-long quest for speed on the Fox network and Fox Sports sometime in the Spring of 2022.

The story of Betty Skelton is fascinating for all that she accomplished in her day. Betty was already well-known in the United States in the early 1950s for her aerobatic flying championships and after retiring from competition, she began running her own air charter service. One day she received a call from a racing promoter who needed to get a couple of drivers who were stranded in Pennsylvania flown to a race on Daytona Beach. That racing promoter was Bill France Sr., founder of NASCAR, and that phone call would be the start of Betty’s involvement in the automotive world.

After a stint at Dodge as Detroit’s first woman test driver and earning the first racing driver’s license by the American Automobile Association, Betty joined forces with General Motors, first with Campbell-Ewald advertising where she would represent various GM cars on TV, print ads, and live events, and eventually she would become the official spokesperson for Chevrolet. Later in the 1950s, she would join the space race with NASA where she was given the opportunity to train and test alongside the Mercury 7 astronauts. She made such an impression that other astronauts nicknamed her “Mercury 7 1/2.”

It was in her capacity with Chevrolet that she would join Corvette Chief Engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov and race car driver John Fitch to drive one of three specially-prepared 1956 Corvettes at Daytona Beach for NASCAR’s Speedweeks where the cars would have the opportunity to run flat out on the beach for both the standing mile and a top speed run. Zora shipped the cars first to Smokey Yunicks shop where the master mechanic prepped the engines for the race. Fitch would win the production sports class in a lightly modified ’56 Corvette with a flying mile speed of 145.543 MPH. Betty would finish in second in her ’56 with a speed of 137.773 mph while Zora would run 147.300 mph in the modified class.

Following the race, the cars were returned to Detroit and were slated for destruction. Bill tells the crowd that the two cars driven by Zora and Fitch went first, but Zora had hidden Betty’s car away at an off-site warehouse undercover and it was stored there for several years before Zora let it go to Clare MacKichan, the Chief Designer for Chevrolet at the time. MacKichan had the car for several years before it ended up back in Florida with a new owner who took the car drag racing.

Once the car was back in Florida, Bill learned it was in the nearby town of Lakeland, Florida and when the owner needed to let the car go to buy a barrel-racing horse for his wife and daughter, Bill began making payments for the car and eventually was able to bring the car home to Plant City where he says he stored it in his wife’s kitchen, to the laughs of the those in the crowd. “Hey, can you believe your wife coming home and seeing four cars in the kitchen,” asks Bill. The former GM engineer also tells us that when he purchased the car, the title was put in the name of his wife, Betty Tower.

Over the years, Bill and Betty would enjoy their ownership of the car, showing it occasionally at various shows, historic racing events, and of course to those who would come from all around to see it and the other cars at Bill’s museum. Betty Skelton would retire from Campbell-Ewald advertising in the mid-1970s and eventually, she would retire to The Villages in Central Florida. Despite being less than an hour from Plant City, Bill says Betty never again saw the ’56 Corvette that now carries her name. Betty passed away in 2011 at the age of 85 years old.

Congratulations again to Bill and Betty Tower for their longtime stewardship of this historic 1956 Corvette. Stay tuned for 2022 as we’ll be sharing the details when the Betty Skelton documentary will be shown on the FOX Network and FOX Sports. Bill Tower will also be hosting a seminar on Friday, March 18 at Sebring and we’ll have additional details as we get closer to the event.

Check out the full celebration from Stingray Chevrolet:

Chapters:
0:00 – Introduction with Steve Hurley, Stingray Chevrolet
6:00 – Unveiling of the 1956 Corvette
7:40 – Background on Betty Skelton
14:00 – Introduction of Pam Miller, FOX Sports
16:00 – Betty Skelton Documentary Teaser
35:15 – Introduction of Joey Chitwood Jr
47:30 – Introduction of Bill Tower
1:42:43 – Gift Presentation with the Towers and Hurleys

Related:
1965 Corvette Formerly Owned by Corvette Hall of Famer Betty Skelton Discovered in PA
[PIC] Throwback Thursday: Betty Skelton and the 1956 Daytona Pace Car Corvette
Corvette Hall of Famer Betty Skelton Passes at Age 85