Shelby Daytona Coupe gains national historic status

As the first car to warrant U.S. Heritage Documentation, Shelby's first-ever Daytona Coupe now merits the same significance as the Chrysler Building, the Apollo capsule, and the USS Iowa.

But of course, we already knew that.

In 1964, Shelby produced six Daytona Coupes to tackle the World Sportscar Championship. Just one of them was built at Shelby American's shop in Venice, Calif.: CSX2287, the original prototype penned by Pete Brock. CSX2287 helped carry Shelby to a second-place finish behind Ferrari in the Division III class, before winning the 1965 season outright -- a first for an American, and a brief time in the limelight before Shelby packed it all up and went to Ford outright.

And yet, if only CSX2287 could talk. The already-legendary race car has seen tragedy and death, a suicide and a murder among its owners, living a second life after its career even more hair-raising than dicing with Enzo. After racing at legendary venues such as Daytona, Sebring, Spa and Le Mans with legendary drivers like Phil Hill and Jochen Neerpasch, Craig Breedlove helped the Daytona Coupe set 25 records at Bonneville in 1965 -- the same year it was ignominiously sold for a paltry $4,500. Shelby had no choice but to dump the cars, now outdated in his eyes, in a fire sale. That big Ford money wasn't calling to just anybody.

A year later, it ended up in the hands of music mogul Phil Spector, who, racking up speeding tickets and fearing for his license, squirreled it -- and himself -- away from prying eyes in the Hollywood Hills. (Spector did generously allow it to appear in an episode of "The Monkees.")

Then, it disappeared. For nearly 40 years the car sat, hidden, in a storage unit in Anaheim, Calif., 40 miles from where it was conceived. CSX2287, evidently knowing how to find its way into the hands of troubled recluses, wound up with another one. In life, troubled Donna O'Hara ignored offers for the car as much as $2 million -- but after her passing, the money talked. It sold for double that.

The significance and sordid journey of CSX2287 has made it the first car to merit preservation by the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Heritage Documentation -- thereby granting it the same preservation status conferred to, say, the Golden Gate Bridge.

None of this could have happened without the help of the Historic Vehicle Association, which collaborated on this project with the Department of the Interior. "Today is an important day for national automotive heritage," said Mark Gessler, president of the HVA. "It has been nearly 120 years since the first automobiles were produced in the U.S. During that time, we have implemented national programs to recognize our historic buildings, airplanes, spacecraft and vessels, but not our historic automobiles."

The Library of Congress will preserve all documentation related to the Daytona Coupe, which includes technical drawings, detailed photographs, and film negatives. It's the same standard used to preserve such icons as the Space Shuttle and the Statue of Liberty, according to the HVA.

Simeone Museum
CSX2287 as she sits in the Simeone Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Understandably, Peter Brock was pleased to hear it. "Having my Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe design recognized as the very first car to be included in the permanent archives of the Library of Congress is a great honor and the thrill of a lifetime," he said. "The Coupe's revolutionary design contributed to new standards for automotive aerodynamic efficiency."

There's more coming, too. HVA says that further cars will be considered for inclusion -- and they don't have to be homegrown, either, as long as they can be proven to be significant.

CSX2287 now resides in the Simeone Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, free from the potential of cursed tragedy that befell Little Bastard. It wore its crudeness with a certain homegrown pride -- the car was built in just nine days, said Brock -- but still managed to be "probably the fastest car in the world." Just a year after CSX2287 was built, Shelby brought America its first win in the FIA International Manufacturers' GT Championship, making it a matter of national pride.

By Blake Z. Rong