he opportunity to own one of theworld’s six most famous Cobras, a realDaytona Coupe factory team car, does-

n’t occur very often. When they do sell it’susually a private transaction. CSX2601,arguably one of the finest examples fromthe famed Cobra Ferrari wars of the mid-60s, comes up for auction on May 15 in In-dianapolis at Dana Mecum’s highperformance extravaganza that will fea-ture some 1200 highly collectible musclecars, race and classic vehicles topped bythe sale of the actual World Championshipwinning Daytona Cobra Coupe. With twoof the six Daytonas already having left USshores for private collections in otherparts of the world, the chance to score theactual car that Bob Bondurant drove tovictory at Reims, France on July 4, 1965to cinch the World’s Championship forAmerica, is probably the chance of a life-time. CSX2601 raced eight times in 1965winning four major events including the1000 kilometers of Nurburgring, where

Bondurant also set the lap record, a timethat stood for 15 years! This was Bon-durant’s favorite Daytona, as he also wonwith it at Monza and Enna in Sicily,teamed with such famous names as Amer-ican Allen Grant, German Jochen Neer-pasch, and Frenchman Jo Schlesser.

The rarity of the Daytona Coupes isunsurpassed in International racing his-tory as they were overmatched numeri-cally by Ferrari’s incredible 250GTOs,which ruled the race tracks of Europefrom 1962 through the beginning of the’64 season, when Carroll Shelby intro-duced the first Daytona at the race trackfor which it was named. Ferrari built 39GTOs, Shelby just 6 Daytonas. From itsfirst appearance at Daytona and Sebringthe Texan’s Daytonas soon became thescourge of Europe’s fastest circuits defeat-ing not only the Ferrari GTOs, butJaguar’s famed “lightweights,” Aston Mar-tin’s 214s and Maserati’s rare 151/3. Thisera of specially bodied aerodynamic

coupes lasted just two seasons, as politicalpressure from the Daytona’s rivals forceda change in the rules which banned theDaytona Cobras from ever competingagain in international competition. It wasquite possibly America’s finest era in atime of real international road racing com-petition, where teams actually competedon circuits created from public roads. Thatfact is what makes CSX2601 so valuablefor modern vintage racing. It is a chassisstill capable of running in recreations ofthese famed events as some, like the Tourde France, are still held on the originalvenues.

The Daytona Cobra is also uniqueamong automotive designs as its unusualshape broke new ground in automotiveaerodynamics, which was just then becom-ing a serious factor on the higher-speedcircuits in Europe then used for the FIA’sManufacturer’s Championship for GTCars. When the guys in the shop first sawmy design for the car they thought it wasthe ugliest car they had ever seen. It wasso controversial when first proposed thatit almost didn’t get built. The Daytona’sradical truncated tail and unusual roofline didn’t conform to the then acceptedideas of aerodynamic efficiency, so therewas considerable debate among so calledracing “experts” as to how the car wouldperform when raced against Ferrari’s in-domitable 250GTOs. Those concerns soonevaporated when it took to the track atRiverside Raceway in the winter of 1963,in the hands of Shelby’s famed develop-ment engineer/race driver, Ken Miles. TheDaytona easily broke the lap record on itsfirst time out and completely changed peo-ple’s ideas of aerodynamic efficiency. Fromthat point forward many designs emu-lated the Daytona’s abrupt aft end and up-swept spoiler that created the balancingdownforce that delivered its speed andtremendous improvement in fuel effi-ciency. Those twin design cues are stillused today on many modern productionautomobiles, making the value ofCSX2601 as important a historic designartifact as it was an almost unbeatableracing design.

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›— Peter Brock

T

LeMans, 1965. Peter Brock [left] and Allen Grant stand next to CSX2601 in the hot pits. Grantshared the wheel with Jo Schlesser. The car lost its clutch in the 10th hour. It was later discovered,during the post-race teardown, that the pressure plate had begun to crack along the part numberwhich had been stamped into the metal.

Having come so close to winning the World Manufacturers Championship for GT cars in 1964, Carroll Shelby was determined not to let Ferrari getthe better of him the following year. However, things were a little different in 1965. Ford had turned the GT40 program over to Shelby American andthose cars were Priority 1. The Cobras didn’t need any development or re-engineering, so they were put into the capable hands of Alan Mann [above,pictured in the foreground]. Mann had raced saloon cars successfully in the early 1960s and proved to be an even better team manager. He turnedout to be an excellent choice to lead the Cobra Team to victory.

Brock’s original, hurried ball-point pen sketch of the Cobra Coupe shows the “ring airfoil” which would have stabilized the car at high speeds. Thetime schedule did not allow this feature to be fabricated, and it didn’t appear to be needed—until the cars went to Europe. The longer circuitsrequiring sustained high speeds proved that something was needed to provide some downforce. The quick fix was the rear spoiler which was firstused at Spa. It was fabricated from a single sheet of aluminum with a couple of pieces of welding rod running forward at each end to keep it fromfolding over in the blast of air coming over the roof. Later it was properly boxed-in and duplicates were made and used on the rest of the Coupes.

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CSX2601 RACE RECORD

DaytonaSebringMonzaSpaNurburgringLeMansReimsCoppa de Enna

2/28/19653/27/19654/25/19655/16/19655/23/19656/19-21/19657/4/19658/15/1965

Bob Johnson/Tom PayneBob Johnson/Tom PayneBob Bondurant/Allen GrantBob BondurantBob Bondurant/Jochen NeerspachAllen Grant/Jo SchlesserBob Bondurant/Jo SchlesserBob Bondurant

DNF7 OA/2 GT8 OA/1 GT5 OA/2 GT7 OA/1 GTDNF5 OA/1GT3 OA/1 GT

Source: World Registry of Cobras & GT40s, printed in 2008.

1214482054122624

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REAL TIME TELEVISIONThe Mecum Auction will be

televised live on Friday May15th on Discovery Network’s HDTheater channel starting at 6pmEastern time. The 20 Cobras andShelbys will be going across theauction block between 7:45 p.m.and 8:30 p.m.

You can join Peter Brock atthe auction in Indianapolis, IN.Take advantage of SAAC mem-ber Dana Mecum’s offer to pro-vide fellow SAAC members twofree tickets each to join the fun inperson. Just e-mail: tickets@mecumauction.com with your name and mailing ad-dress and they’ll send two ticketsto you.

Bob Bondurant and Allen Grant [above, left] shared CSX2601 at Monza where they finished 8th Overall and 1st in GT. Grant chats with Sir JohnWhitmore [above, right] who drove sister car, CSX2602.

CSX2601 at Sebring, 1965 [above]. Tom Payne and Bob Johnson finished 2nd in GT, behind Jo Schlesser and Hal Keck in another Daytona, CSX2299.

The photo below was taken in 1989 when CSX2601 was owned by SAAC member Peter Livanos. It was one about 30 historical cars in his collection,which was garaged in Brookfield, CT.

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