Sybil Lupp

Sybil Lupp was New Zealand’s first female racing driver. 

Her interest in cars began on the engineering side in the 1930s, and she was one of New Zealand’s first female mechanics, taking a job at JG Ingrams garage in 1938. She started racing after her second marriage, in 1947. She took part in the first hillclimb organised by the Otago Automobile Club.

Initially, she only drove in hillclimbs, scoring several wins in MG cars. She had learned to drive aged eleven and her first car was an MG M-Type, bought for her by her father three years later. The Australian Women’s Weekly reported in November 1948 that Sybil had won her second Otago hillclimb championship in succession, and that she held their circuit’s track record. Her records included the full hillclimb for her class and for the standing quarter-mile sprint.

Circuit racing was quite slow to get going in New Zealand after the Second World War, having been quite sporadic before that anyway. In 1949, she entered the first road race held in the country, the appropriately-named Road Racing Championship. The event was a 105-mile circuit, consisting of 50 laps of an aerodrome. She drove an MG TC and was fifth on scratch, fourth on handicap.

In 1950, she was second in the same race, driving the TC, and first on handicap. She had made considerable progress from twelfth on the grid.

After a year when she does not appear to have raced at all, she returned with an MG TD in 1952. She was seventh in both the Lady Wigram Trophy and the CWF Hamilton Trophy. The RRC’s original organisers had switched their attentions to another track and the Lady Wigram Trophy was its replacement. Her Wigram result was another run from the back of the grid. The CWF Hamilton event was held at the 4km Mairehau circuit, run over 40 laps. Sybil had been given a substantial ten-minute handicap.

In 1953, she changed from an MG to a Jaguar XK-120. In this car, she was seventh in the CWF Hamilton Trophy, driving with “HR Brown”, who was a Dr Bruce Hay driving under a pseudonym. Driving solo, she was seventh in the fifth RRC, now held at Dunedin. 

As well as racing, she was one of the founder members of the Otago Motor Association, and ran a series of garages and car dealerships. Her first marriage ended when Jack Lupp died in 1945; two years later, she married his brother Percival. They divorced in 1961. After 1969, when she married Lionel Archer, she was known as Sybil Archer. They had been partners in a Jaguar garage.

Despite her choice of occupation, Sybil always distanced herself from “women’s lib” and claimed that a woman should be led by her man, although she also bragged about being quicker than her husband early in her career.

She died in 1994, aged 78.

(Image copyright Wellington Evening Post)