Daytona Coupe Recreation

Description

1964 Shelby Daytona Coupe Recreation
s/n CA950243
Guardsman Blue Metallic with white stripe

One of the most remarkable cars ever assembled, the Shelby Daytona Coupe rightfully takes its place at the pinnacle of the Cobra legacy. Carroll Shelby’s passion to beat Ferrari at Le Mans came with the realization that the most powerful Cobra roadster lacked the body design to achieve 180+ mph along the Mulsanne straightaway, making it incapable of competing against the formidable Ferrari GTO. Undaunted by the challenge and eager to meet the coming season, young Peter Brock and the Shelby team set about designing an all new aerodynamic body over the roadster chassis. The genius of the Brock design resided primarily in the truncated tail, adapted from Brock’s interest in the 1930s German aerodynamicist Dr. Kamm, who developed the Kamm Tail. With little time to spare, Brock built an intuitively shaped body, capturing both aerodynamic functionality and brutal beauty in a way no other car had done before. Uniquely American in construction and design, the car hit the racetrack proving over and over again with GT class wins in 1964 and 1965 at Sebring, Le Mans, capturing the World Sportscar Championship in 1965 and setting no less than 25 land speed records at Bonneville. The Daytona Coupe was not only a winner in period, it remains today an iconic reminder of the sheer grit, raw talent, and tenacity that would come to exemplify the last vestiges of this great racing period. Just six Cobra Daytonas were constructed in period, in part due to lacking budgets, but more critically, at the peak of the Daytona success, the Shelby team was called upon to focus on the GT40 racing efforts, leaving any future Daytona development behind. Today, the six period-constructed Daytonas are regarded as top-tier collector cars, exemplifying the finest qualities one would find in great racecars of this era.