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Jessi Combs posthumously earns women's land speed Guinness World Records entry

Following her fatal crash last year, Combs' "fastest woman on four wheels" reputation gets official recognition.

Steven Ewing Former managing editor
Steven Ewing spent his childhood reading car magazines, making his career as an automotive journalist an absolute dream job. After getting his foot in the door at Automobile while he was still a teenager, Ewing found homes on the mastheads at Winding Road magazine, Autoblog and Motor1.com before joining the CNET team in 2018. He has also served on the World Car Awards jury. Ewing grew up ingrained in the car culture of Detroit -- the Motor City -- before eventually moving to Los Angeles. In his free time, Ewing loves to cook, binge trash TV and play the drums.
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Jessi Combs
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We lost racer, fabricator and television personality Jessi Combs last August, after she crashed her jet-powered land-speed-record car in the Alvord Desert in Oregon. Combs was attempting to set a new women's land speed record, and this week, Guinness World Records officially entered her time into history.

According to Jalopnik, Combs completed the Guinness-required two-run minimum at Alvord, hitting a top speeds of 515.346 miles per hour and 548.432 mph. Her official speed was entered into the records as 522.783 mph, though it's unclear how Guinness decided on that average.

The previous women's land speed record holder was Kitty O'Neil, who clocked 512.7 mph in 1976. Combs had previously tried to break O'Neil's record, driving her North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger to 483 mph during testing in 2018.

"It may seem a little crazy to walk directly into the line of fire," Combs wrote of herself just before her death. "Those who are willing are those who achieve great things. People say I'm crazy. I say, thank you."

The 39-year-old automotive badass was a friend and idol to many of us at Roadshow. With or without Guinness World Records' approval, Combs will always be remembered as an icon.