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Gus Grissom’s flight-style jumpsuit that he personally wore when he and fellow Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper entered their ‘Miss Firebird’ Hydrodyne racing boat in the Salton City 500 Mile Boat Race in California in 1965. The blue coveralls, no size, feature a firebird patch to the left shoulder, with the chest area and right shoulder bearing logo patches for the Pure Oil Company, Hydrodyne Boats, and Edelbrock Ram Log Manifolds. The back prominently features a patch for Performance Unlimited, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of racing and marine engines, and fiberglass boats that Cooper served as president for between 1962 and 1967. In very good to fine condition, with some light stains, a tear to bottom left leg, and the main zipper not working. Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Mark Grissom, the son of Gus Grissom.
As quoted from page 233 of Colin Burgess’s 2016 book Faith 7: L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., and the Final Mercury Mission: ‘With a sense of tedium setting in, Cooper began to spend a lot more of his free time racing boats and automobiles; a fact that did not go unnoticed by the NASA chiefs. He had raced cars and boats many times over the years. In November 1964, for instance, he had signed up for the $28,000 Salton City 500 Mile Boat Race in California with co-drivers Ogden (Denny) Phipps and Chuck Daigh. In fourth place at the end of the first day, they were forced to withdraw when Cooper discovered that their boat, Sassy Lady, had a cracked motor.
The following year, Cooper and Gus Grissom entered the same race with the sleek Miss Firebird, equipped with two 427 Corvette engines capable of producing 1,000 horsepower. Unfortunately they were disqualified when they turned up five minutes late for a mandatory meeting after their car ran out of gas…As Apollo astronaut Al Worden revealed to the author, the only ones who had been involved in motor racing activity to that time were Cooper, Grissom, Pete Conrad and himself. He recalled that Cooper and Grissom had actually formed a race team with Jim Rathmann they called GRC, for Grissom/Rathmann/Cooper, with two racing cars that they really wanted to enter into the Indianapolis 500 one day, but Grissom would not live to see this happen.’
