Joan La Costa

Joan LaCosta was a flamboyant French driver (apparently), mostly noted as a daredevil and speed triallist in the USA in the 1920s. Her usual car seems to have been a Miller special.

Joan’s origins are obscure. She appears in the mid-1920s, and by 1925, was proclaimed as the “women’s international champion”, as reported in the Santa Cruz Evening News. The Danville Bee, a Virginia newspaper, elaborated on this, claiming that she won her title in a women’s championship meeting at Indianapolis that year. No details of such a meeting are forthcoming, and Indianapolis was not a welcoming venue to women drivers. The event must have been held somewhere else. Reports from this time suggest that she was most active in Florida. Later, she would claim to have been racing on dirt tracks since about 1923, but this is proving hard to confirm.

There is more concrete evidence of one of the most dramatic incidents of her short career, from 1926. Whilst practicing for a speed record run on Daytona Beach in April, her car caught fire, travelling at about 130mph. The cause of the fire was a broken fuel line. A photographer was on hand to capture Joan leaping from the car, as she steered it into the sea in an attempt to douse the flames. She was not seriously hurt. Only a few days later, she made the record run in a different car, and set a series of new female records, driving at 138mph. The dramatic photos were reprinted in newspapers all across the United States.

Later in the year, she made another record run at Jacksonville beach, also in Florida. This time, she got up to 145mph, smashing her own record. The car was a Miller Special, although not much detail about it is available.

Her talents did not stop with record-breaking. In 1926, Joan entered a match race on a half-mile dirt track, as part of an IMCA (International Motor Competition Association) event in Toronto, Canada. IMCA was the only sanctioning body that allowed women to race at all. She won, beating Louis Disbrow. The two had considerable history, having raced against each other twice, in Canada and Mississippi. The same year as their Toronto battle, Disbrow apparently led a protest against Joan’s inclusion in a Lakewood starting grid. His objection was overturned, partly because her speed-trial times proved that she was faster than several of the male entrants.

IMCA’s leading promoter of the time was J. Alex Sloan, who believed in motor racing as spectacle, and used several woman drivers to add controversy and a touch of glamour to IMCA meetings. At the same time as he was promoting Joan, he was also using Elfrieda Mais, usually as a stunt performer, although she did race occasionally. The row with Disbrow must have had him rubbing his hands together with glee. Disbrow’s position on female drivers was also rather puzzling; his own career had been launched in the 1900s, as a riding mechanic to Joan Newton Cuneo, the first notable American female racer.

Her activities in 1927 are unclear. Her name does not appear on any published start lists for IMCA meetings, but she may well have continued to race at fairgrounds and horse-racing tracks.

In 1928, Joan won a women’s race in Milwaukee, but this was one of her last triumphs. At the end of the year, she announced her intention to retire and take up flying.

This did not happen, although she continued to appear in the news due to a conviction for robbery in 1929. She attempted to steal jewellery from another woman, using a replica gun in a hold-up situation. In defence, she claimed that she had lost “all of her money” at a horse race, and was unemployed. During her court appearance, she fainted and burst into tears of remorse.

By 1931, she had married a meat salesman called Joseph Maurer. At the time, she worked in the offices of a stationery firm, and pronounced herself “through” with both motor racing and aviation.

Joan LaCosta was almost certainly not her birth name. Marriage records show that Joseph Maurer married a woman named Marion Martins in 1931. There was a racing driver named Marion Martin or Martins active in Canada in the summer of 1925, just before Joan LaCosta appeared. She raced against Elfrieda Mais three times, winning once, over a mile, at Regina. Her car was a Frontenac-Ford. She also took part in open races at Edmonton, and set a speed record at Toronto. At the Canadian National exhibition at Toronto the following year, Joan LaCosta makes her confirmed debut. On her arrest for robbery, she was named as Marion Carver. Reports of her trial mention parents living in Memphis, and a former husband named Waldo Martins.

Her original nationality is not clear; she was probably not French, but American or perhaps Canadian. Given the showmanly nature of IMCA’s promoted events, it is not completely surprising that some drivers hid behind noms de course, or exaggerated their origins to make themselves stand out. There was perhaps an element of hiding from a disapproving family or a grudging husband.

She and Maurer had children at some point. Her life after her marriage was spent as a private individual.

(Image source unknown)

Female Drivers in North American Circuit Racing, 1910-1950

Joan LaCosta

Female drivers were banned from competition by the USA’s main motorsport authority, in 1909, but between then and the 1950s, a number of women found ways to race. Many of them competed in speed trials, which were still allowed, and these were often part of fairground “daredevil” exhibitions. The International Motor Competition Association (IMCA) presided over many of these fairground meets, usually run on dirt tracks, and they allowed men and women to race together, as well as putting on women’s races, particularly match races between female drivers. IMCA also promoted motorsport in Canada. Below are profiles of some of these racers. See also The Speederettes for details of an early group of dirt-track racers. Zenita Neville now has her own profile, as does Elfrieda Mais.

Marion Martins - French driver who raced in the 1920s in Canada, usually in IMCA events and driving a Frontenac Ford. In 1925, she competed in Edmonton, Calgary and Regina, on the half-mile dirt oval tracks there. At the Edmonton Exhibition, she won a match race against a driver called Al Cotey. At Regina, shortly before, she defeated Elfrieda Mais in a ladies’ match race. As well as various races, usually of very short distance, she took part in speed trials. For at least one of these, at Ottawa, she used a Bugatti. After 1925, she seems to disappear. Marriage records suggest that she and Joan LaCosta could have been the same person, racing under different names. However, they will remain as separate entries until this is more certain.

Arline Mazy - American stunt driver and occasional racer who was active in the 1910s and is sometimes mixed up with Elfrieda Mais, against whom she competed. In 1918, she claimed in the Muncie Evening Press, and Indiana paper, that she had never been beaten by another woman driver. The same year, in July, she won a race on the Lima Driving Park dirt oval, driving a Hudson and defeating seven other competitors. Two months later, she won another race outright at the track and her car was described as “easily the snappiest car entered.”

May Smylie - raced a Lyons Motor Special at half-mile dirt tracks in the US in 1923 and 1924. She first appears at the North Shore Polo Club in Chicago in July, competing in two races against five other women. She entered the same event in 1924 and despite a dramatic spin in qualifying that nearly ended in a roll, she was second in the first race. In September, she returned to the polo club for a ten-mile challenge race against eight female drivers, including Elfrieda Mais. The winner of this event was set to take on the winner of a men’s race, but the result is not forthcoming.

Simmone Soudan - raced at dirt tracks in Illinois in the mid-1920s. She was active in the series of women’s races that took place at the North Shore Polo Club in Chicago, competing there in 1923 and 1924. The results of these races are not fully forthcoming, although she appears to have been unplaced in 1924. Later, in 1925, she hit the news when her husband of one month, Clyde Beetley, was accused of bigamy by a former wife.

Helen Temme (Pyott) - raced in Chicago and Indiana in the 1910s and 1920s, usually under the name “Mrs. Oliver Temme”. She raced on fairground dirt tracks in a single-seater, and may well have raced in mixed events at least once. A press clipping from 1923 describes a meeting at the North Shore track, where the winner of the ladies’ race would take on the men. She may also have raced at North Shore in 1924. She may have begun racing as a teenager, in 1916, although details of this race have been lost.

Bunny Thornton - racer and daredevil who was a star of the dirt track scene in the 1910s. She was an early rival to Elfrieda Mais. 1915 was her biggest year in a car and she took on Elfrieda Mais several times in states as far apart as Minnesota and Missouri. She earned more media attention when she used her “dainty” Scripps-Booth car to tow Louis Disbrow’s burning car to safety at Michigan State Fair. She acquired a Sunbeam for 2016, but it is unclear whether she ever actually raced it. She later worked as a car sales demonstrator and flew with Katharine Stinson. Bunny was usually referred to as being English and in her early twenties, but a newspaper report of a divorce case involving her gave her real name as Frances Goate, who had first married in 1904. She had previously been an actress.

Blanche Voge - stuntwoman and sometime racer who performed on the IMCA circuit in the 1920s. She sometimes drove alongside her sister, Bonnie. In 1927, she was defeated by Joan La Costa at Minneapolis over two miles. The following year, she competed against Elfrieda Mais in a similar match race. Her car may have been a Frontenac, as used by a Don Voge, who was presumably another relative. Both sisters were occasionally described as stenographers who had taken up motorsport.

(Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/shushmuckle/7002149122/. Originally from the Danville, Virginia newspaper, The Bee.)