Zenita Neville

Zenita Neville  raced in the USA and Canada in the 1920s. She was one of IMCA’s earliest “Champion Woman Drivers of the World”.

IMCA (International Motor Competition Association) was America’s leading promoter of oval racing from about 1910 up until WWII. Many female drivers competed in their events after the “official” US competition board, the AAA, banned women from taking part in sanctioned races and trials. Zenita Neville was one of its earliest female stars.

In 1920, she won her first race, at Combination Park in Massachusetts. The track was a half-mile dirt oval. A couple of weeks later, she won again at Fitchburg Fairground, also in Massachusetts. Her car was a Hudson and this was her regular car between 1920 and 1922. During this time she won at least nine races, all in the northern states and mostly on the East coast. 

In 1922, she also raced a Peerless and an Essex. She travelled to Canada this year, appearing at tracks in Calgary and Edmonton, where she raced against Sig Haugdahl. Photographs show her with a Peugeot at Daytona, but I have been unable to find any results for her in this car. A Canadian paper (the Leader Post from Regina) claims that she won a long-distance race “the Florida beach” the year before. In 1921, Zenita herself claimed to have driven “close to 100mph on the beach at Daytona”. News reports local to Daytona itself make no mention of her at all.

Her normal racing venues were fairground tracks, and she often competed against a driver called Bill Endicott. Their match races would sometimes be preceded by a public disagreement in the local press, usually with Endicott in his capacity as IMCA’s “Dean of Racing Drivers” wishing to bar women from competing and “Miss Neville” defending herself and other women drivers. It was a less well-known fact that “Wild” Bill Endicott, previously known as “Farmer Bill”, was Zenita Neville’s husband.

She was described as the “Champion Woman Driver of the World” and IMCA publicity sometimes claimed she was the only professional female driver in America. 

It is hard to assess how good a driver she actually was. IMCA and other dirt-track promoters were not above stage-managing their events to create more drama and column inches. There are no records of Zenita crashing her car; she seems to have been competent in her handling of it. She often took part in speed trials as well as races, these were harder to influence and may prove a better way of assessing her talent. She won one of these trials at Combination Park, Medford, in 1921, completing two half-mile laps two seconds faster than her nearest rival and appears to have got the better of Endicott over similar distances.

After 1922, she disappears from the entry lists. Her post-motorsport life remains a mystery but we do have some clues as to her previous occupation. Newspaper articles from 1911 talk of a young actress with the same name. The Marshall County News-Democrat described her as hailing from Chicago when she played the lead role in “The Wyoming Girl”. A year later, she crops up in Iowa in the Denison Review, playing the trombone in the Aulger Bros Band. 

(Image copyright Minneapolis Star)