The Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe vs The Ferrari 250 GTO

I suspect we all sometimes wonder why certain car models have, over time, become more valuable that others, especially ones we have a connection to.

I have, at times, contemplated why the Iso Grifo is more valuable than a Maserati Ghibli or Bora. I also wonder why a Ferrari 250 GTE is so much more valuable than an Iso Rivolta GT. Lately I have been contemplating the relative values of a Ferrari 575M Maranello compared to the Aston Martin Vanquish S only because I am a new owner of a Vanquish S.

How about you – are there any cars that you wonder about their relative value compared to others?

Today I reach into the My Car Quest Wayback Machine from July 2017 where our Mr. Wyss wonders about this same question related to the Ferrari 250 GTO and the Shelby Cobra Daytona. Considering the very large difference in selling prices between the GTO and Cobra Daytona and the small number of Cobra Daytonas made it would not be surprising to see a large increase in prices in the future for the Shelby, don’t you think?

Mike Gulett, Editor

by Wallace Wyss –

It is only, gosh, three years after the event happened but sometimes I have to struggle to keep up with classic car events going on worldwide. This event that I just discovered was a comparison between the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe and the Ferrari 250 GTO at the Simeone Automotive Museum in 2014.

They called it the “indoor Demo Day “ and the presentation featured a genuine, not replica, example of each car. As the pictures by Andrew Taylor amply demonstrated, there was plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences between these two cars born one year apart. The Cobra, CSX2287, was the very first Coupe built and the first to race, at Daytona in 1964, where it was leading until a fire put it out of the race.

The Ferrari shown alongside at the Museum it was the second GTO built and the car that finished second overall, first in class, at the 1962 Sebring 12-hour race, driven by Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien. The owner of the Ferrari, Mr. Bernard Carl, was kind enough to be on hand to offer his impressions of driving both cars. He was also a former owner of another Daytona Cobra Coupe, #2601.

The Simeone Museum is a museum that doesn’t just believe in static displays, so they make sure that, on occasion, you “see, hear, and smell famous race cars run.”

The Demo Days, which began in 2009, feature extremely rare racing sports cars from the Simeone collection being driven on the three-acre lot in back of the Museum.

Dr. Simeone himself gave a lecture on the cars.

Brock Debriefed – Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe

Now my memory might admittedly be a bit faulty after 40 years but, when I interviewed Pete Brock, former Shelby American employee, for my book Shelby’s Wildlife, over 40 years ago, he told me he conceived of the shape of the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe all by himself, and he was not consciously echoing the shape of any other car. But you have to admit, seeing the long bonnet, sloping rear deck of his 1964 Cobra Daytona coupe right alongside the year earlier 250GTO, the Italian car must have had some subliminal influence.

In the front, though, the two cars are more markedly different. The Ferrari GTO has those three inlet holes above the main grille cavity, and by the way those holes could be covered with little doors on a cold day. The Cobra Daytona coupe had a more efficient hood vent, in the form of a hole in the bonnet, with an under tray leading from the bottom of the radiator up to the hole so that air that had been through the radiator was expended, if not sucked out by this arrangement.

In the rear, the Daytona coupe had a rear spoiler, much like the 250GTO, though it is worth pointing out that, when the 250GTO was first rolled out of the factory, it had no rear spoiler. It was obvious from the first tail lift problems that it needed one. It is unclear to this author whether they had already attached that spoiler by the time Brock was designing his car.

In terms of side vents, the Ferrari 250GTO had the famous three vertical (or shall I say inclined) hot air exhaust vents. The Daytona coupe also had a side vent, it’s hard to say which was more efficient.

As far as livability (and who is to say whether either was really planned for street driving?) the GTO was far more livable. Its side windows went up and down where, on the the Cobra Daytona coupe they weren’t glass but plexiglass and fixed in place, making it a virtual hot box. And in the Daytona coupe. one thing that contributed to creating a hot box was the side pipes sunk into the rocker sills while the Ferrari 250GTO has the exhausts coming out the back as befits a street car.

I actually had a ride in a 250GTO with a Motor Trend associate art director driving (that car owned by Monterey Historics founder Steve Earle), so I can verify it was a moderately comfortable street car though you could in fact drive it from the street right onto a race track.

I never had a ride in a Daytona Cobra coupe, though I am sure it is a more grueling experience, though Phil Spector, the former owner of the car shown here, did indeed drive his on Sunset Strip, managing to endure its discomforts in exchange for the status of driving a bona fide race car on the street. Another former Cobra Daytona coupe owner who told me he street drove the car and managed to street race it in the Hollywood Hills was former Shelby team member Bob Bondurant.

Forty years ago, I asked Pete Brock about the Aston Martin 214 and 215, Zagato bodied cars that Aston prepared and raced in 1963, whether they were responsible for inspiring him to have the concave rear end of his Daytona coupe but he didn’t seem to remember those models though I subsequently found a picture of Brock racing a Lotus behind an Aston 214 or 215 so I thought he would remember following that car around the track.

Suffice to say that both cars had the influence of the E-type Jaguar motivating them, though ironically Enzo’s panic that the E-type would shame the Ferraris on the track was misplaced; they weren’t reliable enough to threaten the subsequent GTO in any way.

I have to give Brock credit for whatever you call it; maybe “situational awareness,” having beaucoup publicity pictures taken in 1964 while the events involving the cars design and fielding in combat were happening at Shelby, showing him with drawings, clay models, etc. so that, when any historians came along decades later, they would have ample proof that yes indeed this young designer was the man responsible for such a brilliant design. (I always think of taking those pictures long after the situation happened…).

Brock left Shelby-American when the Ford GT came on strong, those cars designed in Dearborn and there was no longer a need for a by-guess-and-by-gosh designer who could design on the spot.

In the comparative value department, it is difficult to affix a present day dollar value to the two models. Dr. Simeone is believed to have paid car finder Martin Eyears $3 million for the Daytona coupe, which he wrested away from the mother of the girl that owned it after she died, while the last 250GTO sale I am aware of was said to be around $38 million though I heard rumors of one going for $52 million since. The most I can remember a Daytona coupe going for at a public auction was at the Mecum auction in Monterey in 2009 for $7,685,000.

This in spite of the fact there are six times as many 250GTOs as there are Cobra Daytona coupes.

The remarkable thing about the Cobra Daytona coupe is that, when Shelby first set aside time and money to build the car, the rest of his race-veteran crew had been pessimistic that this kid, who designed the firm’s T-shirts, graphics and the like, could come up with a winning design. They nicknamed it “the slug.” And then when the car went out for testing at Riverside, the call came in to the shop that it reached 180 mph on the straight, there was begrudging praise for The Kid. That was about 10 mph faster than the 289 Cobra roadster could do downhill, flat out in top cog, with the wind….

Let us know what you think in the Comments.

THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss comments on cars in his weekly show, Autotalk, broadcast from KUCR FM Riverside.