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 The roots of the Cobra go back to early post-war Britain where car trader Cliff Davis was enjoying some success in racing with his Cooper-MG special. To expand on this he commissioned John Tojeiro to build a new race car with a larger engine in 1952. Tojeiro was a gifted engineer who built racing specials as a sideline to his small business in painting and repairing bodywork. He constructed a lightweight tubular chassis with steel boxes in front and rear to support an independent suspension system. It was fitted with a 2-liter Bristol engine which was placed in front but near to the middle of the car for optimal balance. Then this chassis was finished with a nice barchetta-style 2-seater body by Gray and Rich Panelcraft, inspired by and similar to the barchetta body of the Ferrari 166MM made by Touring of Milan.
Davis again had a very successful season in this nimble, lightweight car during 1953 and attracted a lot of attention with it. This Tojeiro-Bristol special, registered LOY 500, was to become the ancestor of a long line of sports cars and still is raced today.
 The match between the Tojeiro-Bristol special and AC Cars was both rapid and somewhat confusing. Tojeiro was ordered to build a car similar to the Cliff Davis car by Ernie Bailey, but this one was to be fitted with a more powerful Lea Francis engine. This Bailey had a coachwork company that manufactured the 5-seater tourer bodies which were offered on the venerable AC 2-litre chassis under the name of "Buckland" and were painted by Tojeiro in his regular line of business. Another man who got involved was Vin Davison, a garage owner who also owned the shed (which was next to his garage) rented by John Tojeiro for his business. Bailey was confronted with the dwindling sales of the AC 2-litre model, a very outdated car, and he and Davison saw an opportunity for the Tojeiro design at AC, who badly needed a replacement. So they introduced John Tojeiro to AC.
Tojeiro demonstrated the Cliff Davis car to AC chairman Charles Hurlock, who was impressed and promptly made a deal to take it into production. Davis had agreed to lent his car to Tojeiro for this event because he wanted to sell replicas of it (which did happen on a small scale), but didn't want to sell his own car to AC. Hurlock on the other hand wanted to exhibit the "new AC" at the 1953 London Motor Show to attract funds for its development.
 This was solved by taking the Tojeiro car ordered by Bailey, fitting the AC 2-litre unit in it and naming the model "Ace", after a sports car AC produced before the war. In return John Tojeiro was offered 5 pound per car sold for the first 100 cars (a lousy deal in hindsight) and Vin Davison was offered a job with AC, assisting in modifying the Tojeiro design so it could be manufactured with the parts in stock and making it street legal for both Britain as for the export markets (mainly the US).
The AC Ace was received very well at the 1953 London Motor Show and this first version, which looked very similar to the Tojeiro original, sold 147 times between 1953-1954. So within one year after the Tojeiro-Bristol special appeared on the tracks AC had turned this car into a successful production car. Rapid indeed...
In 1954 Allan Turner of AC Cars enhanced the design of the car, giving it its classic looks like you see on this page. With the AC 2-litre unit however the Ace was a bit underpowered and not competitive in racing. As a result tuner Ken Rudd reverted to the Bristol units Tojeiro had started out with, which were 1.5 times as powerful. Bristol powered Aces were successful in racing and took 10th place in the 1957 Le Mans 24 hours race, 8th and 9th place in the 1958 edition and 7th (1st in its class) in the 1959 edition of this race. The car shown here is the one that took the AC Ace's best ever Le Mans finish in 1959; this event was won coincidentally by Caroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori in an Aston Martin...
 With the redesign of the Ace undertaken by Alan Turner in 1954 the model line was also expanded with a coupe. It received the name Aceca (pronounced "ah-seeka") and it was expected to further enhance sales because it was far more practical in the usually lousy British weather than the open Ace, which didn't offer any shelter against the elements. But unfortunately it never really caught on, though it was a very pretty car.
After the Ace's initial success sales remained marginal; it was a well-established and well-built sports car but too impractical for daily use in Britain and too expensive on the export markets where this hand built car had to compete against the likes of the mass produced Austin-Healeys 100 and Triumphs TR2 and TR3. It did however enjoy a relatively long production run and appeared on the price lists until 1963. In total about 735 Aces had left the factory and only 326 Acecas; most of them were powered by the Bristol 6-cylinder in-line unit, displacing 1971 cc and producing 125 hp @ 5750 rpm in basic trim, enough for a top speed of around 180 kph. After Bristol had stopped the production of this engine at the end of the 1950s AC reluctantly switched to 2.6 litre British Ford Zephyr engines, which were heavier and less powerful. Only 47 AC Ace 2.6 versions were sold from 1961 till 1963, but they showed the way of things to come...
After being paid a fee for the first 100 Aces sold John Tojeiro and AC more or less went their separate ways. Tojeiro continued to manufacture one-off racing specials in a wide variety until well in the 1960s and was even commissioned to build a special racing version of the Ace by AC in 1958, which finished second in its class at the Le Mans race that year. In later years Tojeiro switched to running a plastics business and it wasn't until the 1980s and the Cobra replica and kit-car boom that he really came to regret his naive deal with AC, which dissociated the creator from his creation that became an automotive icon and obscured his rightful place in car history.
 Just as the fortunes of the AC Ace were waning rescue came from an unexpected corner. Texan racing driver and entrepreneur Carroll Shelby was forced to stop his active racing career after heart problems in 1960 and now fancied the idea of creating an affordable sports car with European looks and handling and brute American power. The idea itself was not original, it had been done for decades with British examples like the Hudson powered Railton in the 1930s and the Nash powered Healey and Ford powered Allard in the 1950s. In fact, it was a Cadillac V8 propelled Allard J2 which Shelby drove in 1953 that had inspired him. But the way Shelby executed this idea was however unique.
Shelby contacted several British sports car manufacturers with a proposal to built a 100 of these hybrids so that the car could qualify for production sports car racing and generate the necessary publicity. Most of these companies, like Healey, declined for reasons varying between too much investment costs and not liking the idea at all. AC on the other had didn't have these reservations: the hand built Ace didn't need much retooling to adapt it to a different engine and, even more important, AC could do with a fresh impulse for its sports car business.
 So for AC the idea came at the right time. On the other side Shelby found the Ace ideal for his plans as well. It was a car with a racing pedigree which he saw win its class in the 1959 Le Mans race, it was lightweight and pretty and had a sound built quality. That left the matter of the right engine.
Problem was that most American cast iron V8 blocks were simply to heavy for a nimble sports car. GM's small alloy 3.5 litre V8 could have been an option, but it was just going out of production at the time due to high manufacturing costs. This engine design later reappeared in the Rover cars and now probably is the most popular power unit to propel Cobra replicas and kit cars. But thanks to his contacts with the Ford factory he learned that they were introducing a new compact V8 for the Fairlane models. It was a 221 cubic inch (3,621 cc) unit produced with the latest casting techniques which meant a reduced weight.
It was perfect for the car Shelby had in mind and even better: Ford was very much interested in his project as they were looking for ways to attract a younger clientele and a new exciting sports car fitted in well with this strategy. Shelby was offered a few lightweight 260 ci (4,260 cc) versions of the Fairlane engine to produce prototypes of his sports car.
 Development of the Shelby car had begun as early as 1961 at AC Cars in Britain. Under supervision of chief engineer designer Alan Turner of AC the chassis was stressed and strengthened to prepare it for the increase of horsepower and especially torque. Initially the regular 221 ci Ford unit was used for the prototype; remarkably this engine only weighed 7 kg more than the Bristol unit used before. The new Borg-Warner manual gearbox put on an additional 4.5 kg compared to the earlier Moss transmission, but in all the increase in weight of the V8 powered Ace was surprisingly limited.
In high performance trim the old Bristol unit produced about 150 hp; the new Ford engine was good for 240 hp but this didn't prove a problem for the car. What did however was the 365 Nm torque the new engine produced, next to upgrading the chassis and suspension it required a new Salisbury final drive, like the one used in the Jaguar E-type. Another feature of the prototype were the inboard disc brakes requested by Shelby; this idea was rapidly abandoned after the first prototype since the heat from the brakes melted the final drive's oil seals. Shelby had also requested a glassfibre body like on the Chevrolet Corvette but AC rejected that. Not only was the original aluminum body lighter (it was only 23 kg) than a glassfibre body would have been at the time, but AC also partly owned the sheet metal factory which supplied the aluminum for the body.
 In 1962 the prototype, without its power train, was transported to Shelby in the US. On the exterior only minor revisions were visible, most notable were the flared wheel arches to fit the wider track of the suspension and the more protruding front end with narrower grill. Shelby fitted the prototype with a high-compression 260 ci engine version, which delivered an impressive 325 hp. Then he used it for car shows and road tests by journalists and alike, who where all blown away by the cars amazing performance. It topped 246 kph and accelerated from 0-60 mph (96 kph) in 4.2 seconds. To give the impression that the production of the car had already started it was resprayed in a different paint color each time it was taken for a test drive.
After generating enough publicity the car was taken into production that same year with the 260 ci engine producing 260 hp; the delivery of the cars initially got under way very slowly due to all sorts of engineering problems still needing to be solved. Sufficient cooling of the engine was the main problem and for a while Shelby even had to resort to fitting Corvette radiators since there was no suiting Ford radiator available.
The car was officially baptized "Shelby-Ford AC Cobra", usually shortened to Shelby Cobra in the US (and AC Cobra abroad). Shelby had thought up the Cobra designation himself. A popular story is that this name came to him in a dream, but more probably he remembered it from his early racing career when lightweight, sheet-steel copper-brazed engines were used (like in the Mercedes 300 SLR). Fellow American Powel Crosley was the first to take this type of engine into production in the early 1940s and he named it "COBRA" (short for copper-brazed). Engines manufactured accordingly usually had COBRA stamped on the valve cover, and that's where Shelby might have picked up the name.
Until early 1963 only 75 of the 260 ci powered cars were sold, of which very few are left. Many of the original Cobras 260 were later upgraded to Mark 2 (Mk II) specs and fitted with the new 289 ci engine.
At the end of 1962 it became clear that the Cobra still had some teething problems. Next to overheating there were complaints about lack of precision in the steering and even steering failures, a weak front suspension and less performance than advertised. That last problem was taken care of by introducing a 289 ci (4735 cc) version of the Ford Fairlane engine, which also included a new radiator, in the Cobra early in 1963. This engine produced 271 hp and 426 Nm torque and gave the car a performance closer to that of Shelby's original 260 ci High-Power test car, though it came still a few horsepower short. In the months that followed the inaccurate worm and sector steering was replaced by a modern rack and pinion steering system, the front suspension wishbones were strengthened, a wider grill and side vents were added to the body to solve the overheating problems and also the bootlid was shortened for more body rigidity and the flares at the wheel arches enlarged to fit wider tires. Other changes were improved electrics including an alternator, and a longer final drive (3.77:1 instead of 3.54:1) to reduce the 0-60 mph acceleration time.
 Sometime in 1963 the improvements amounted to so much that the Cobra was a distinctly better car than before, and so it was referred to as the Mk II. Question is, when exactly did it become a Mk II? Was it when the 260 ci block was replaced by the 289 ci block after 75 Cobras had been completed in the first months of 1963 or was it when the Cobra had completed its first evolution after 125 were manufactured in June 1963? Fact is that starting with car number 126 the external features identified with the Mk II appeared, like the side vents. Since the distinction is a bit hazy, even more so by all the proper Mk I versions later more or less upgraded to Mk II specs, the Cobras lacking the external features of the Mk II and built between 1962 and 1963 usually are referred to as Mk I.
A "standard" Cobra 289 weighed only 984 kg and had a maximum speed of 222 kph. It accelerated from 0-60 mph (96 kph) in about 5.5 seconds and needed 1 litre of fuel every 6.5 km. To keep this little brute, it measured 3.85 x 1.55 x 1.24 m (length x width x height), on the road it had an independent front and rear suspension constructed out of lower wishbones, transverse leafspring upper links and telescopic dampers. Solid disc brakes in front and rear provided the stopping power. For those who wanted more an extensive list of performance options was available, like high compression cylinder heads, dual 4-barrel carbs (standard it had a single 4-barrel Holley) or even four 2-barrel Weber carbs.
 For a racing driver as Carroll Shelby performance was of course all important. And the way to prove the Cobra's true performance was on the racing track. As soon as October 1962 the Cobra appeared on the track, and it was there to stay.
At first it showed potential in the GT-class races, mainly because it was much lighter than its (American) competitors, but was also unreliable. The first results came in January 1963 at Riverside in the US where the Cobras finished first and second, beating the Chevrolet Corvette Sting Rays by quite a margin. At international races however the Cobra roadsters were usually beaten by Ferraris 250 GT and GTO. In June 1963 Shelby and AC both entered a Cobra in the Le Mans 24 hours race and the AC entered car finished 7th overall, trailing a total of six Ferraris. It then became clear that the Cobra 289 roadster was perfect for racing on the usually short American tracks where acceleration made the difference, but lacked the necessary aerodynamics to win international races on the longer and faster circuits around the world, where top speed mattered.
Never the less the Cobra 289 won the 1963 and 1964 United States Road Racing Championship, the 1963 Bridgehampton 500 km (first international race win for the Cobra, driven by Dan Gurney) and the 1964 Sports Car Club of America Road Race of Champions, not to mention a lot of local GT races around the world. The car in this picture was produced for the Sebring 12 hours race in 1964.
 Meanwhile in Britain AC Cars had officially stopped the production of the Ace in October 1963 and had nothing else to sell. So late in 1963 AC started to produce the AC Cobra for Britain and Europe next to their production for Shelby. But where in the US the Cobra was a reasonably priced car, in Europe it was very expensive and took a lot more money to buy than the (more refined) Jaguar E-type for instance. Up to 1965 AC sold 61 Cobras, mostly right hand drive (like the car above).
Shelby started to develop the Mk III Cobra during 1964, but this time the changes didn't come gradually. The Mk II 289 ci Cobra was offered until late in 1965 and a total of 580 were manufactured (including the European ones and the Mk I 289 ci model), most of them in 1964. Of that total 65 were pure racing cars or prototypes.
So the Cobra didn't sell much, but publicity-wise it was a big hit, both for Ford and for Shelby. The Cobra generated a lot of attention and this started sort of a Shelby cascade: in 1963 Shelby was contacted by the British Rootes Group who wanted something similar done to their modestly powered Sunbeam Alpine, a perky 2-seater roadster, as he had done to the AC Ace. And so Shelby put the Ford 260 ci V8 that was moved out off the Cobra into the Alpine to create the Sunbeam Tiger. As opposed to the Cobra the Tiger was mass produced and therefore more affordable and sold much better. Also in 1963, after the failure to win from Ferrari in Le Mans and Ford's ill-fated bit on this Italian manufacturer, Shelby teamed up the British Lola outfit of Eric Broadley with the Ford Company to create the now famous Ford GT-40, using the 289 ci V8 to power the Mk I version. And last but not least, in August 1964 Shelby was asked by the Ford Company to develop a high performance Ford Mustang that could compete in the SCCA races. Shelby fitted the 289 ci V8 racing engine in the Mustang fastback and created the Shelby GT-350(R), the ultimate muscle car which in its street guise was far more common on the American roads than the exotic Cobra. But still, the Cobra remained one step ahead from this competition...
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 ...and that was accomplished by yet another engine upgrade for the Cobra, in order to boost its speed and competitiveness in racing. Shelby's much quoted motto was "there's no substitute for cubic inches" and following that philosophy a big 427 ci (6997 cc) V8 was shoehorned into the Cobra Mk II chassis in March 1964. This engine was usually found in the large Ford Galaxie racing saloons and proved quite a handful in the nimble Cobra prototype driven by Ken Miles at the Sebring race. Its potential however was impressive and so Shelby decided to turn it into a production version.
During the rest of 1964 the new Cobra 427 was further developed; quite a number of substantial changes to the original concept were needed to realize its potential and to cope with the brute power of the big block engine.
 Most notable of the Cobra's third incarnation was the complete redesign of its chassis and suspension. With the help from Ford's engineers and computers, fronted by Klaus Arning, a new tubular chassis was constructed from stronger 4 inch (10.16 cm) tubes (the previous Cobras had a chassis from 3 inch (7.62 cm) tubes) and fitted with a coil spring suspension (replacing the outdated leaf spring system). Remarkably the new suspension design was based on the suspension system John Tojeiro had used for his AC Ace prototype more than 10 years before! The tubes of the chassis were set 2.5 inch (6.35 cm) wider apart to make room for the larger engine and the coil spring suspension was complemented with upper and lower wishbones and very wide tires to ensure sufficient traction.
Also the Cobra's exterior was revised. The body became 8 inch (20.32 cm) wider and was fitted with distinctively protruding wheelarches to cover the big wheels. An added hood scoop indicated its powerful engine. With all these modifications the Cobra looked even more butch and aggressive than it had done before and had assumed its ultimate form.
 The new Cobra 427, also referred to as the Mk III or coil spring Cobra, was introduced to the public at the Riverside International Raceway in January 1965. Production only started in April 1965 at AC Cars in Britain and so the goal to build 100 racing versions of this Cobra in order to be certified by the FIA for international production car racing couldn't be met. This caused Ford to concentrate its racing effort on the GT40 programme and not to enter Mk III Cobras in racing under the factory banner.
Because of that Shelby found himself stuck with 34 Mk III Cobras built for competition in production car racing. For a few months these unpainted cars were languishing outside the Shelby factory until a visiting sales representative suggested selling them as "semi-competition" road cars. This way the barely street legal Cobra 427 S/C was born, marketed as the fasted production car available. Only 31 were made, the other 3 were sold as full competition racing cars.
Still, the regular Cobra 427 roadster was hardly less impressive. It accelerated from 0 to 60 mph (96 kph) in 4.3 seconds, from 0 to 100 mph (161 kph) in 8.8 seconds and had a maximum speed of 165 mph (265 kph). This top speed was somewhat tempered by the Cobra's increased weight (to 1100 kg) and relatively high drag.
 Fitted with the Ford 427 ci engine the Cobra had a staggering 425 hp @ 6000 rpm at its disposal, not to mention an earth moving torque of 650 Nm @ 3700 rpm. The S/C version did even better at 520 hp @ 6500 rpm. But not all Cobras 427 were actually fitted with the 427 ci performance engine. Due to cost and availability concerns many of the road going versions of the Cobra 427 were fitted with the cheaper and less powerful Ford 428 ci (7014 cc) V8 engine in "Police Interceptor" trim. This engine provided the Cobra with 340 hp @ 5400 rpm and brought the top speed down to about 140 mph (225 kph) with 0-60 acceleration in 4.8 seconds and 0-100 in 11.7 seconds. It was quite a bit heavier as well at 1311 kg. Still, most customers didn't notice the difference since getting the maximum performance out of the car was only reserved for the experts; regular drivers had a hard enough time keeping the car on the road.
That aspect of the Cobra 427 and the fact that its concept was aging rapidly also implied its doom: the last Shelby Cobra 427 left the factory in 1967 after only 348 of them were built. This was the end of the original Cobra in the US.
The Shelby name continued on the Mustangs and with the demise of the Cobra in 1967 the Shelby Mustang GT-500 was introduced, powered by the 428 ci V8 previously appearing in the Cobra 427 under false banner. Also the Sunbeam Tiger was upgraded in 1967: its 260 ci block was replaced by the 289 ci unit once propelling in the Cobra Mk II and which was also used in the Shelby Mustang GT-350 up to the 1968 model year, more or less completing Shelby's hand-me-down system.
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 The end of the original Shelby Cobra in the US didn't mean the end of AC's production of the Cobra though. Since AC still had quite a lot of parts of the Mk II Cobra in stock and the Cobra's demand in the US was declining AC decided to introduce the Cobra in Europe. Figuring that the big block 427 version wasn't very practical in European conditions anyway AC produced a version of the Mk III coil spring chassis fitted with the 289 ci engine. The car was officially named the AC 289 since Ford had registered the rights to the Cobra name but of course everybody called it the AC Cobra 289.
The first AC 289 left the factory in 1966, but it didn't prove very popular. The 2-seater roadster was considered old fashioned and its appeal didn't really catch on at the time. AC sold the last 289 in 1969, 2 years after the last Shelby Cobra 427, and only 32 were produced, practically half the amount of Mk II Cobras sold by AC in Europe previously.
AC went on producing the very expensive but beautiful, Italian styled AC 428 coupe and convertible which underneath resembled the Cobra 427 Mk III but was more a grand tourer than an all out sportscar. And AC held on to all the production tools for the Cobra, which proved almost invaluable later on.
 In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Cobra's fame dissipated. The value of the in total 1003 produced Cobras shrunk rapidly and it was hard to sell one, but then the tide turned. With modern road cars being rationalized and stripped from exciting but dangerous features in the name of safety and low insurance costs a sort of romantic craving for the brute cars of the past set in. This was felt mostly by the boys and young men who grew up with the myths of the Cobra and were dying to experience one. Since there were so few around and owners held on tight to their cars the value of the Cobra increased to a point that it became interesting to make replicas.
During the second half of the 1970s various Cobra replicas emerged. The success of these resulted in a new and improved AC 289 Mk IV appearing in 1981 which was manufactured by CP Autokraft of Brian Angliss under an agreement with AC Cars. Later on Ford licensed the Cobra name to Angliss to distinguish his "official" replica from all the other replicas that had appeared, often of inferior quality, and Angliss took over AC Cars when the company ran into financial trouble. Attempts were made to revive AC with new cars named Ace and Aceca which were less than successful, but reproducing the Cobra using the original tools and moulds meant a continuing source of income for the struggling AC Cars for the last couple of decades.
Meanwhile John Tojeiro has attached his name to a Cobra replica produced by the British Dax company and Carroll Shelby first started completing "leftover" 1966 Cobra 427 S/C models in 1989 and then introduced his own replica Cobra in 1995 (known as CSX 4000, named after the continuation of the original chassis numbers). Then some bickering started about who owned the rights to what regarding the Cobra, but ultimately the dust settled down and history repeats itself: starting from 2004 Shelby Automobiles will offer the Shelby AC Cobra CSX 1000 (meaning the new chassis numbers will precede the original CSX 2000 (Mk I & II) and CSX 3000 (Mk III) numbers), with chassis and body produced by AC in Britain using the original tools and then shipped over to be completed by Shelby in the US. A car conceived more than 50 years ago and still touching the hearts of car enthusiasts; the characteristics of a true classic.
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 A special chapter in the Cobra's history is it's racing career. Racing driver Carroll Shelby conceived the Cobra with the intention to win races with it to generate good publicity for the car and kindling sales. These days the popular myth is that the Cobra dominated GT racing in its days, but this is, like all myths, not completely true.
In the US the Cobra roadsters did particularly well in local races for practically a decade. There it took full advantage of its favorable power to weight ratio and its sprinting capacities on the relatively short tracks. In international production car races however it was less than successful. During the 1960s the time that open roadsters were competitive in top level racing had passed and high maximum speeds and therefore aerodynamics became more important. The cars to beat were all coupes with much better shapes to slice trough the air.
This became very clear during Shelby's first attempt at the Le Mans race with the Cobra in 1963. Two Mk II Cobras were entered, one prepared by Ed Hugus and one by AC Cars, both fitted with hardtops to reduce drag on the long Mulsanne straight. Only the right hand drive AC entry (resembling the car you see here) survived at the end and finished 7th, beaten by 6 Ferraris. The conclusion was that the roadster lacked top speed to win races on the longer international circuits
 After that disappointing finish at Le Mans Ford and Shelby decided to concentrate their international racing efforts on the Lola based GT40 project. The GT40 still needed a lot of development and to fill the gap until the GT40 could be entered competitively Shelby agreed to a proposal by young designer Peter Brock to create an aerodynamic coupe body on the chassis of the Cobra 289. This option had occurred as a result of a recent change in FIA homologation rules for GT racing cars. Now it had become possible to either change the body or the chassis of the car without making another 100 examples of it to qualify it as a GT car. The intention of this was to make slight enhancements possible for small manufacturers taking part in the series, like fitting wider tires or extra air intakes, but there were no exact boundaries defined. This made fitting the sleek GTO body on the 250 GT berlinetta chassis possible for Ferrari and Brock envisioned something similar for the Cobra 289.
A small development team was formed by Brock, racing driver and engineer Ken Miles and mechanic John Olsen and in September 1963 work on the Cobra coupe started. The objective was to wrap an aluminium body as tightly as possible around the Cobra's underpinnings to reduce frontal area, to make it cut through the air and yet to meet FIA regulations regarding windows, windshield, spare tire and so on.
 In his previous work for GM Peter Brock had encountered a theory by German doctor Kamm from the 1930s. His argument was that in order to create the most aerodynamical shape at the rear of a car you could create a "virtual tail" by designing flowing tapered lines and then sharply truncate the end where practical. This way the airflow would form a tail behind the truncated body resulting in nearly the same low drag for the car as it would have with a (unpractical) long tapered body. Brock decided to apply this "Kamm-tail" on the Cobra coupe, which was very innovative at the time. At the same time Brock tried to make the coupe good looking, and though he met a lot of skepticism, also within the Shelby organization, the first test with the coupe in February 1964 proved his design was a winner.
A few weeks after the first test the coupe was entered in the Daytona Continental race. It virtually outclassed all competition (including the Ferraris) until a damaged differential and a pit fire brought it to a halt, but not before it had set the fastest lap time. The spectacular coupe got a lot of attention in the press and since then it was known as the Daytona coupe. Ford decided to back Shelby's attempt to become World GT champion with the Cobra Daytona coupe and another 5 coupes were manufactured for Shelby in Italy by Carrozzeria Gran Sport.
 Then a winning spree of almost 2 years started with a successful 1964 Le Mans race. Two Daytona coupes were entered and they were so quick that they left all competition behind and ran with the cars in the faster prototype class. Drivers Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant took 4th overall and 1st in the GT class, defeating the magnificent Ferraris 250 GTO. More victories followed but after cancellation of the Italian Monza race the Cobra Daytona coupe just nearly missed the GT World Championship crown which was snapped up by Ferrari's 250 GTO.
Ferrari didn't compete in the 1965 GT World Championship, lacking a car to beat the mighty Cobra Daytonas. The Daytona coupes, entered by Alan Mann racing from Britain as Shelby was busy with the GT40 programme, then dominated on the international circuits, scoring victories in 8 of the 10 championship races. The 1965 Manufacturers Championship was easily won.
After the 1965 season Ford and Shelby lost all interest in the Cobra Daytona coupe, since they were moving on with the GT40 effort and didn't want in-house competition from the Daytona coupe. The coupes were left in England with Alan Mann but under a threat of a large tax fine (the cars never being officially imported) they were flown back to Shelby in the US who had a hard time selling them. It took a few years to get rid of them at prices of around 5000 US Dollars...
That last bit is hard to believe nowadays. The Daytona coupes are the most valuable of all original Cobras, each of them worth over a million US dollars, at least ten times as much as a Cobra roadster. And rightfully so, it's a beautiful beast looking like it's all coiled for a huge jump forward and it's packing an enormous punch. The Daytona coupes are largely responsible, certainly outside the US, for the Cobra's fabled racing heritage in which the "regular" Cobra roadsters played a minor part. In that respect it's a pity that there wasn't a street version developed of the Daytona coupe, sort of like a reinvented AC Aceca, at the right time it might have rendered the Cobra an image similar to that of Ferrari instead of being a specialty car.
Never the less, the Cobra became an icon. It may have its flaws, like being impractical, difficult to control (especially the 427) and lacking chassis rigidity; its uncompromising nature, appealing looks and unsurpassed dynamic sensations more than make up for that. There are far more enthusiasts than original Cobras, so expect a substantial price if you want to obtain one.
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