CarBrandLogos archive · Shelby · 1964

ShelbyShelby Daytona

The coupe body that gave Shelby's roadsters the top speed to beat Ferrari.

Photo: User:Jaydec · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Shelby history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Shelby Daytona, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Cobra roadster had the power to beat a Ferrari 250 GTO and the aerodynamics of a garden shed. On the fast circuits that decided the FIA GT championship, the open cars gave away enough top speed on the straights to lose races they should have won, and Shelby American needed a solution before the 1964 season.

Shelbydaytonacoupe · Brett Barnes · CC BY 3.0

Design and engineering

Pete Brock, a young designer who had worked on the Corvette Sting Ray at GM, proposed a closed coupe body over the existing Cobra chassis, following the principles of Wunibald Kamm: a smooth nose, a roofline falling to an abruptly cut-off tail, and a much smaller frontal area. Several people at Shelby thought it looked wrong. It was built anyway, over a standard 289-powered chassis with the engine set back behind the front axle, and on its first test it was dramatically faster in a straight line than the roadster while using less fuel.

In production

Only six were built, the first in Venice, California and the rest bodied in Modena by Carrozzeria Gran Sport because Shelby had no spare capacity. They won their class at Le Mans in 1964, and in 1965 they carried Shelby to the GT title in the world manufacturers championship, the first time an American constructor had taken an international championship of that kind. Ford then pulled the team onto the GT40 programme and the Daytona programme stopped.

Legacy

The reputation was built as much by scarcity as by results, and by the strange afterlives of individual chassis, one of which spent years in storage owned by a recluse before resurfacing. CSX2287, the original prototype, became the first vehicle entered in the United States National Historic Vehicle Register.

At a glance