Denise McCluggage, a trailblazing auto racer and journalist who shattered stereotypes about women as professional drivers, died on Wednesday in Santa Fe, N.M., where she had lived since the late 1970s. She was 88.
Her death, at a hospital there, was announced by Autoweek magazine, the successor to Competition Press, which she helped found and edited in the 1950s as the nation’s first motorsports weekly. She also wrote for Autoweek until recently.
An accomplished skier and a former sportswriter for The New York Herald Tribune and other publications, Ms. McCluggage had been in love with cars since she was 6, when she saw a Baby Austin 7 parked on the street.