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Automotive Consumer
VINTAGE: Bob Bondurant Reunited with Daytona
Champion racer and designer Peter Brock together with Ferrari-beating race car.
Veteran racer Bob Bondurant at the wheel of the 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra that he raced at Le Mans more than 40 years ago, reunited at his Arizona racing school in 2009.(Photo: Bob Golfen)
Famed racers Bob Bondurant, Peter Brock and a 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe, which Brock designed and Bondurant helped drive to historic racing victories and track records, were reunited Friday in Arizona for just a little more track time.
With Brock at his side, Bondurant stepped once again into the cockpit of Daytona CSX2601 while a dozen photographers focused on the scene. Bondurant cranked up the roaring V-8, and moments later was performing some very hot laps around the twisting road course at his Bob Bondurant School for High-Performance Driving, just south of Phoenix.
“It still works,” a grinning Bondurant said after climbing out of the Cobra. “It still has power, and the handling is fantastic. It was so much fun that I didn’t want to come back in.”
The Daytona was one of six streamlined coupes that Carroll Shelby and his cadre of top drivers, including Bondurant, brought to Europe to beat Ferrari. Which they did, for the first time putting an American manufacturer on the podium in European GT racing.
“It was great to take this, an American car, and beat the Ferraris,” Bondurant recalled.
The special reunion was put together by the Mecum Auction, which will be offering what it calls “the crown jewel of American racing” at its collector-car auction May 13-15 in Indianapolis, Ind.
The Shelby Daytona, restored to original, could receive the highest bid ever paid at auction for an American car, said auction owner Dana Mecum, who attended the event at the Bondurant driving school. The current record is held be another Cobra, Carroll Shelby’s own supercharged Super Snake, which sold for $5.5 million in 2007 at Barrett-Jackson’s January auction in Scottsdale, Az.
“This will definitely set an American record,” Mecum said Friday. “Another Daytona sold privately about three years ago for $9 million. And it didn’t have the racing history of this car.”
With Brock at his side, Bondurant stepped once again into the cockpit of Daytona CSX2601 while a dozen photographers focused on the scene. Bondurant cranked up the roaring V-8, and moments later was performing some very hot laps around the twisting road course at his Bob Bondurant School for High-Performance Driving, just south of Phoenix.
“It still works,” a grinning Bondurant said after climbing out of the Cobra. “It still has power, and the handling is fantastic. It was so much fun that I didn’t want to come back in.”
The Daytona was one of six streamlined coupes that Carroll Shelby and his cadre of top drivers, including Bondurant, brought to Europe to beat Ferrari. Which they did, for the first time putting an American manufacturer on the podium in European GT racing.
“It was great to take this, an American car, and beat the Ferraris,” Bondurant recalled.
The special reunion was put together by the Mecum Auction, which will be offering what it calls “the crown jewel of American racing” at its collector-car auction May 13-15 in Indianapolis, Ind.
The Shelby Daytona, restored to original, could receive the highest bid ever paid at auction for an American car, said auction owner Dana Mecum, who attended the event at the Bondurant driving school. The current record is held be another Cobra, Carroll Shelby’s own supercharged Super Snake, which sold for $5.5 million in 2007 at Barrett-Jackson’s January auction in Scottsdale, Az.
“This will definitely set an American record,” Mecum said Friday. “Another Daytona sold privately about three years ago for $9 million. And it didn’t have the racing history of this car.”
The Lyonheart K
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