Back in 1964 Carol Shelby was tearing up the tracks in the
US with his Cobra roadsters. Nothing had a chance. But on
the European tracks with longer straights it was a different story.
The roadster aerodynamics limited its top speed and the Ferrari’s would clean
their clocks. In 1965 Shelby was intent on winning against Ferrari.
Because Ferrari was allowed to enter a special version of their road car it
opened the door for Carol Shelby to do the same. Fortunately he had Pete Brock
on his payroll and Pete had studied aerodynamic texts that the Germans had put
together from years of research. Pete also had a great eye for form and
with the help of the Shelby crew they designed the Cobra Coupe. It was
fantastic and the chassis number of the first one was CSX2287. Six were
made in all.
The design was so perfect it allowed Shelby to win
against Ferrari, but Ford was intent on LeMans and wanted Shelby to devote his
shop to the GT40. This left CSX2287 to get cleaned up and used on the
public relations Cobra Caravan. It even spent some time on the Bonneville
Salt Flats with Craig Breedlove and Bobby Tatroe setting 23 international and
national speed records.
Then it disappeared. It would take thirty years to
turn up again.
Since Ford wanted Shelby to concentrate on the GT40, Carol
put the coupes up for sale. The most he could get for any of them was
about $4000 without engines and transmissions. CSX2287 was
sold first to Oscar Koveleski of Autoworld fame and then to Jim
Russellof Russkit slot cars who converted it to street use (sort of) and
sold it to none other than Phil Spector. Phil accumulated a lot of
speeding tickets and also found the race car did not convert that well to the
street, often becoming unbearably hot. Phil took it to a shop to see
about further converting it to street use, but the mechanic told him it would
cost tons of money and offered to scrap it for him for $800.
Now here is where the story gets a little screwy. Some
say that Phil sold it to his body guard for $1000 in 1971. The body
guard, George Brand, then gave it to his daughter, Donna O’Hara, who stashed
the car and wouldn’t tell anyone where it was or even admit that she had it.
Donna got divorced in 1982 and she retained control of the
car. In the last couple of years Robert Lavoie, an attorney representing Kurt
Goss a childhood friend of Donna’s, tried several times to buy it for half a
million dollars, but she refused.
On October 22, 2000, Donna went under a bridge Fulerton,
CA, with her rabbits and a couple of bottles of gasoline. She poured
the gasoline on herself and lit it off. It took her 15 hours to die
and she wouldn’t even tell the police who she was. She just told them to
“Shut up”. It took over a month for her to be identified when
friends reported her disappearance.
Goss claimed that she called him five days prior and told
him that if anything happened to her he was to take care of her personal
belongings. Goss said that she wanted him to have the coupe along with three
other cars of hers. When he heard that Donna had died he contacted her
mother and paid the outstanding storage charges expecting to remove the
coupe. The owner of the storage center would not let Goss remove it
without legal authority and Donna had no will.
Meanwhile Martin Eyears, a rare car dealer from Montecito,
tried to close a deal with Donna’s mother to buy it for $3,000,000.
Donna’s father suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and can’t help with the
questions over ownership. So Martin decides to sell it to a collector on
the east coast for $4,000,000.
source: http://jimsgarage.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/the-missing-daytona-coupe-mystery/http://www.fzrestoration.com
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