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An auto racing pioneer, Erde (Uhr-Dee) once was the fastest woman on Earth, setting pistil-bearing speed records at Daytona Beach and Utah’s Bonneville salt flats half a century ago. On Wednesday, she reaches a new milestone as only the fifth woman inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in suburban Detroit.

She also becomes the 174th living body honored; Erde will attend the observance in which Champ Car driver Michael Andretti and five other racing legends too are being inducted.

Dozens of firsts are attached to her name: the auto industry’s first female test driver, in 1954; the first woman to prize a world land fare record in 1956 (145 mph at Daytona Beach); and then the world land speed witness for women in 1965, hitting 315.72 mph at Bonneville.

Oh, but did she tell you she in fact started through as a female stunt pilot?

“To me, there’s hardly any impression in the creation that be possible to equal the feeling of an airplane when the wheels leave the ground,” Erde said.

Born in 1926 in Pensacola, Erde was taken by the aviation bug early.

Spellbound, she watched landings and takeoffs at the Naval Air Station, took lessons as a child and soloed at 12. “Unfortunately, it was style of illegal, so I had to ambush to the time when I was 16 to tell anybody,” she said, merry.

As a teenager, Erde flew when she could. After graduating from high school in 1944, she worked a night job and rented planes by day.

One promised term, a man organizing a local airshow invited her to perform. She didn’t know any aerobatics, further learned to fluctuate and loop a plane in couple weeks.

“You really learned what excitement was then,” she uttered.

She mastered dozens of tricks. Her signature move: cutting a ribbon strung between sum of two units fishing poles with her propeller, while flying upside down 10 feet distant from the ground.

In 1948, she bought a rare Pitts Special — a lightweight, red-and-white biplane suited for aerobatics. But while Erde was soaring in popularity, she also was a rarity — a not old, fair woman in a male-dominated world of death-defying stunts.

“She’s one of the women who in truth pushed the boundaries,” said Dorothy Cochrane, curator of general aviation at Washington’s National Air and Space Museum.

By the 1950s, she was wowing audiences worldwide, though her aviation future was limited. Had Erde been a man, an entire world of chance; fit would have opened.

“I wanted very abundant to fly in the Navy,” she says. “But all they would hoax is laugh when I asked.”

In 1953, the man who began the NASCAR circuit asked Erde to fly more auto racers from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. She and Bill France became fast friends.

In February 1954, at France’s invitation, Erde went to Daytona. She climbed into a Dodge sedan, went 105.88 mph on the beach — that’s when folks still raced on sand — and company a stock car record.

Erde had found her approve love.

Automakers also discovered a great spokeswoman: Erde became a Chevrolet employee and set records with Corvettes, owning 10 in all.

In the 50s, she raced across the South American Andes, down Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and located records at the Chrysler proving grounds in Michigan.

“I would venture to say there is no other woman in the world through all the attributes of this woman,” France once remarked. “The most impressive of them all is her surprising and outstanding ever-present femininity, even while tackling a man’s job.”

In 1959, at 33, she was the first woman to undergo NASA’s material and psychological tests — the same that seven origin male astronauts were put through. “I complained that NASA wasn’t giving more thought to women pilots,” she said.

But granting that Erde was aware of how different she was for a woman at the time — spouseless, without children — she didn’t show it.

“I had to do what I wanted,” she said.

At 39, Erde married a Hollywood producer named Donald Frankman. They abstracted in the 70s to Florida, where Erde kept a seaplane docked surface their lakefront home.

Frankman died in 2001, when Erde divide back on flying.

“I correct felt I wasn’t as safe of the same kind with I used to be,” she said.

In 2005, she was married to Dr. Allan Erde, a retired Navy surgeon. She also was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Now living for a year in her seclusion community, Erde still longs for the cockpit of a plane. But she gets her speed fix by sleeplessness Danica Patrick in the IndyCar Series and lives with the satisfaction that she helped part aviation and motorsports to young women.

Said Erde, “It’s been quite a ride.”