The Shelby Daytona Coupe holds a special place in racing lore. The car pitted American ingenuity against the ferocious engineers at Ferrari. The Superformance Daytona Coupe recently listed for sale on eBay is a licensed continuation of the legendary race car from the 1960s. And it’s one of just 150 that were initially built in the mid-2000s.
Superformance - opens in new window or tab., based in Jupiter, Fla., continues to offer a Shelby Daytona Coupe today.
Carroll Shelby was tearing up American racecourses in the early 1960s with his recently developed AC Cobra. He produced that car in a venture with British sports car builder AC Cars.
Shelby installed Ford’s new 260 and 289 cubic-inch V-8s into the compact AC body creating an agile sports car. Those racers met Shelby’s expectations except for one big one. On European tracks, which had much longer straightaways than US courses, the Cobra Roadster couldn’t keep up with products from Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Jaguar. He knew that he could make the roadster faster by adding a roof for better aerodynamics.
The Innovative Kammback Design
To get the job done, Shelby turned to a young protégé, Peter Brock. In 1959, when Brock was only 19, he had become the youngest employee ever hired by GM’s design department. That's where he established his creative resume designing the 1959 Corvette Stingray Racer Prototype. But he left soon after to work for Shelby, where he developed paint schemes and logos.
While at GM, Brock studied the technical papers of German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm, who in 1937 suggested another approach to reducing drag. The trick was to use a sharply truncated rear shape.
Go Faster with Lower Drag
In October 1963, Brock created a napkin sketch of his radical Kamm-inspired body for Shelby. Despite resistance from Shelby team members, Brock forged ahead.
Brock knew that FIA rules allowed him to use the existing roadster chassis without additional homologation. So he constructed plywood bucks to shape aluminum panels, which he assembled over the roadster chassis. When the team tested the new design, the low drag allowed the miraculous coupe to run 30 mph faster than its predecessor.
Shelby produced six Cobra coupes in 1964 and 1965. They won six major GT class events, taking the 1965 GT World Championship—the first time for an American manufacturer. Brock had defeated Ferrari.
Just Like the Real Deal
The 1965 Superformance Daytona Coupe for sale is, according to the seller, “as close as you can get to the real deal.” This car—number 146—has just 3,404 miles on the close. The sale includes a signed Carroll Shelby certificate of authenticity.
Florida-based Superformance, founded in 1996, engineers and builds market historic sports cars. Its output list includes Ford’s GT40 Mark II, Lotus Super 7, and the 1963 Corvette Grand Sport. All its products are licensed continuation vehicles. That’s gearhead lingo for replicas of cars no longer in production—but once again built according to original standards and blueprints.
Superperformance built this Daytona Coupe in 2007. The replica builder and distributorequipped the car with a Dart 444 cubic-inch V-8 mated to a Tremec T56 six-speed. It wears the Indigo Blue and titanium stripes of the original race-winning Shelby coupes.
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