Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe - Snake with Added Bite - Finish the project!
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Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe – Finish the project! 80% ready to be recreated into your own personal pre-66 GT frontrunner.
Stretching the margins of the regulations to the utmost limit has been part and parcel of motorsport since the dawn of competition. None more so than in the mid-sixties when the GT battle at Le Mans was hotting up to temperatures never recorded before. Going into 1964, to win the GT class at the Sarthe, your regular Jaguar E-type or AC Cobra was no longer enough, as Ferrari had come up with its all-conquering 250 GTO. Compared to the slippery shaped Italian stallion, Carroll Shelby’s competition Cobra was like a box trying to carve through air on the endless Mulsanne Straight, even in its FIA-spec hardtop form.
Exploiting the same regulatory freedom as the GTO and the Jaguar E-type lowdrag coupe, Shelby requested Pete Brock, his head of special projects, to pen a similar streamlined coupe shell, as the homologation requirements allowed for a completely new body as long as the mechanical underpinnings remained untouched. The resulting shape was in every way incomparable to that of the original Cobra. The front started with a curvy nose section sticking much further forward from the front axle, while the rear was typified by a blunt cut-off Kamm tail. Over the winter, development driver Ken Miles proceeded to clock up the miles to find the set-up changes needed for the new shape to work.
The Coupe was dubbed the Daytona Coupe soon after the original CSX2286 chassis made its bow in the Daytona 2000kms race on the 16th of February, when drivers Bob Holbert and Dave MacDonald missed out on a shock debut victory, the car having caught fire in the pitlane. A month later, though, the car swept the GT class in the Sebring 12 Hours, netting fourth overall and a class win by eight laps over the leading Ferrari.
In total, six Daytona Coupes were produced, with the remaining five being bodied by Carrozzeria Grandsport in Modena, ironically just around the corner from the Ferrari factory. Italians being Italians, they made their five bodies look slightly more elegant than the original machine, and even though it proved to lose a bit of straightline speed to the US-built Daytona Coupe, Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant had enough in hand to claim fourth overall while beating Ferrari to the GT class victory in the 1964 Le Mans 24 Hours. It was a prelude to what Shelby later managed to accomplish with the GT40.
This 80% completed Daytona Coupe using a chassis and body by Carocars in Poland will allow you to turn your FIA Appendix K copy of this legendary machine into a frontrunner in historic pre-66 GT racing, with options ranging from International series such as the Le Mans Classic Series’ Sixties Endurance and Motor Racing Legends’ Pre-66 GT Sprint to the Dutch-based SuperSixties or the German-based HC ’65. Its current engine is a brand new 289ci road engine that hasn’t seen any mileage on it, but the package includes all the parts to upgrade the powerplant into a full competition engine, along with a plethora of other parts inviting you to finetune the machine to match your personal wishes and desires – from perspex light covers to adjustable wishbones. Very few standard parts like a brake line, a loom and some hoses remain to be added.
If you love to get your hands dirty on the car that you race, this is a rare opportunity to assemble your own Daytona Coupe into a winning proposition. As an added bonus, the car comes with scanned copies of the relevant pages from the rare and priceless book about the Daytona Cobra Coupes by Peter Brock, Dave Friedman and George Stauffer.
Specifications:
– Year: 1963 (Appendix K style recreation)
– Make / Model: Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe
– Body: GT, 2 seats, 2 doors
– Condition: New, 0 km
– Engine: 8 cylinders, 4700 cc petrol (289ci)
– Transmission: manual, 4 gears
– Brakes: discs front and rear
– Price: EUR 125,000 (sold on margin basis, trade)
– Location: The Netherlands