Winning Converts
Peter Brock, on the right, had the vision for the Daytona Coupe. John Ohlsen, in the middle, believed in the project when few others did. And Ron Moore, on the left, did some drafting for Brock. Photograph Courtesy Peter Brock Collection
My lines for the Daytona were inspired by an obscure treatise on automotive aerodynamics written in Germany in 1937. I’d discovered this technical white paper in GM Styling’s library while designing the XP87 Sting Ray Corvette for VP of Design Bill Mitchell.
I had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Mitchell of the value in the report’s startling coefficient of drag numbers, but he wasn’t interested. Rebuffed, I quietly put the yellowed sheets aside, knowing their potential value for another time.
Six years later, on my own and with no directional oversight other than Shelby’s cautious encouragement, I penned the lines for the future World GT Champion. As a student of racing history, I knew that Shelby’s powerful Cobra roadsters, successful as they had been in winning the United States Road Racing Championship in 1963, would be totally outclassed in Europe.
On the superfast circuits like Le Mans, Spa and Monza, where the 180-plus-mph speeds of Europe’s elites from Ferrari, Jaguar and Aston Martin would top our Cobra roadster’s maximum by at least 20 mph, there was no chance. The Cobra’s future success demanded a complete redesign, but no one within the Shelby organization except me had any idea how to proceed.
Horsepower wasn’t the answer, as the team’s trusty 289s, with 385 horsepower, were already at the peak of present technology. Superior aerodynamics were the answer, but no one on the Shelby team was familiar with the subject because high speeds had never been required on America’s short tracks.
In the early ’60s, aero was still a black art. The Germans had been years ahead of everyone prior to WWII, but almost everything they’d discovered had been lost, destroyed or forgotten after the war. I had quietly convinced Shelby that a recent edit in the FIA’s arcane racing regulations would allow us a complete body change, provided our Cobra’s chassis remained unchanged.
A skeptical Shelby approved my concept, provided I could present the idea on paper to our veteran team of racers and convince them of the concept. When I asked about our “budget,” Shelby made it very clear: There was no budget to build anything, much less a completely new design.
Undeterred, because pencil work essentially cost us nothing, I worked up a presentation that described the aerodynamic value of my strange chopped-tail shape and presented it to the team. Silence. Almost everyone on our team, except Shelby’s top driver, Ken Miles, rejected the far-reaching concept.
Miles, from England, had seen what the Germans were capable of prior to WWII and agreed to personally help me and John Ohlsen create a full-sized wooden “buck,” upon which aluminum panels could be formed–provided the funds to build the entire prototype somehow became available.
Asking Ford for financial assistance, of course, was out of the question. At that point, Shelby was still a relative outsider in Dearborn. Ford’s management had been delighted with the Cobra’s 1963 success against their cross-town rivals at Corvette, but those racers had all been privateers; there was no way Ford management considered our tiny California operation capable of taking on Europe’s best.
Besides, Ford’s team had already spent millions acquiring Eric Broadley’s Mk6 Lola to develop its own Ferrari challenger, the GT40. Protective insiders at Ford felt they didn’t need any more competition than they already had.
Fortunately, after winning Le Mans and retiring from racing in ’59, Shelby had been awarded the 11 western states’, distributorship for Goodyear’s new racing tires. With a couple of my ballpen sketches in hand, Shelby met with Akron’s top management and convinced them of the promotional value of building our challenger. With funding promised over lunch, a corner of our shop was allocated to build the car.
In spite of all the internal dissension, Ohlsen, Miles and I persevered. We led a small group of shop converts into building our first Daytona Coupe in 90 days!
Miles then proved the design on track at Riverside Raceway, smashing his previous Cobra lap record by 3.5 seconds. On Riverside’s back straight, even with “short course gearing,” he topped 180. He knew right then that with proper gearing, our Coupe had the potential to compete internationally.
The Cobra’s newfound speed became a turning point in Shelby’s career. Even a cautious Remington could not refute the reality of the numbers. Days later, in Florida, the Coupe set a lap record in our first race of the ’64 season. On the high banks of Daytona during the 2000Ks, it easily outran the highly favored Ferrari GTOs for several hours until sidelined by a spectacular pit lane fire.
Five weeks later, it again set a GT lap record while winning the 12 Hours of Sebring. These two performances convinced Henry Ford II to back Shelby’s crusade for the World GT Championship in Europe. Now, three months later in France, the clock was ticking.
Under Its Own Power
