Baby, don't you drive that car!

In 1926, a Bugatti roared through an Italian hillside town taking one of the 1500 treacherous bends in the 67 mile Targa Florio race course in Sicily. The driver was Eliska Junkova, the first woman to ever compete in the race. "The Czech racing queen of the Jazz Age," known in the West as Elizabeth Junek, went on to compete and win in races against some of the best male race drivers of the Twentieth Century.

The screech-the-oval races, currently known as NASCAR, started as an offical entity and icon of the American South in 1948. "The King" of what began as local stock car racing, Richard Petty said in 1976 regarding contender Janet Guthrie, "She's no lady. If she was she'd be at home. There's a lot of differences in being a lady and being a woman."

Thirty years later, with NASCAR courting women's, er, ladies' dollars at the gate to worship their valiant male champions, Petty says he still hasn't changed his mind about women in racing.

But then, perhaps he never met Eliska Junkova.

This catty commentary was suggested as material worthy of consideration by Her Royal Dowager Highness of The Clan Fiend (left) -- First cat to compete in the Antique Car Races.