‘Fastest woman’ turned media star
Crashed trying to beat land speed record
Jessi Combs, who has died at age 39, was a television personality and racing driver known as “the fastest woman on four wheels”; she was killed in her jet-powered car in the Oregon desert while preparing for an attempt on the women’s world land speed record.
Jessica Michelle Combs was born on July 27, 1980, in Rockerville, S.D. Her father, Jamie Combs, taught her to drive; her great-grandmother, Nina Debow, raced steam-engine cars.
After leaving school she moved to Denver, then turned down a scholarship to study interior design to attend a technical college in Wyoming that prepares students for the car industry.
She won second place in the 2011 Score Baja 1000 race in California. A clutch of victories in the Ultra 4 off-road series followed, and there was a Top 10 finish in the 2015 running of the women’s-only Rallye Aicha des Gazelles in the Sahara.
She also forged a media career, hosting nearly 100 episodes of the Xtreme 4x4 show on Spike TV.
With her upbeat style she presented a dozen episodes of Mythbusters and spent three years fronting All Girls Garage, in which women upgrade classic cars. She was a mechanic-presenter upgrading classic jalopies in Overhaulin’, and she wrote a children’s book, Joey and the Chopper Boys, about a motorbike-loving girl.
In Oregon she was hoping to break the women’s land speed record of 512 mph, which had been set by Kitty O’neil there in 1976, on three wheels. Combs already held the four-wheel record, having driven at 398.9 mph in 2013. Her ultimate goal was the overall record of 763 mph set by Andy Green in 1997.
For her latest attempt, Combs’s project team had taken an abandoned Lockheed F-104A Starfighter jet, restored the fuselage, modified the wings and added aluminum wheels.
The North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger was 56 feet long, with a 52,000-horse engine that consumed up to 160 gallons of fuel per minute. It is believed the crash was caused by a mechanical failure, the car exploding in a fireball.
A few days before her death she posted a message on social media: “It may seem a little crazy to walk directly into the line of fire ... those who are willing, are those who achieve great things.”