A 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe has shattered records at the Gooding Christie’s Pebble Beach Auctions, selling for a staggering $42,905,000. According to Motor1.com, the hammer fell at approximately $39,000,000 before reaching the final price with fees, easily eclipsing pre-sale guidance that had anticipated a figure in excess of $25,000,000.
Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe Sells for Record $42.9M at Monterey
This historic transaction makes the blue coupe the most expensive American car ever sold at auction, obliterating the previous benchmark set by a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ that brought $22,000,000 at Pebble Beach in 2018. The blockbuster result anchored a massive week for Roadandtrack, which generated an overall auction total of roughly $748,000,000.
Origins, Design, and the Fight Against Ferrari
The Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe was born out of a specific competitive necessity. While Carroll Shelby’s open-top Cobra roadsters proved dominant on short circuits, they lacked the necessary top-end speed to challenge Ferrari’s Colombo V-12-powered 250 GTO on high-speed international tracks like Le Mans and Daytona.
To solve this, designer Peter Brock and driver Ken Miles engineered a slippery coupe body featuring a roof, revised bodywork, and a distinctive Kamm tail. Built within a tight 90-day window at Shelby’s facility in Venice, California, the new aerodynamics made the car significantly faster than the roadsters.
The Daytona made its racing debut at the Daytona Continental on February 16, 1964, immediately building a commanding 10-minute lead before a fueling mishap forced its retirement. The program continued to evolve, and by July 4, 1965, at Reims, driver Bob Bondurant clinched the FIA GT Manufacturers’ Championship—marking the first and only time an American manufacturer has ever claimed that title outright.
The Unique History of Chassis CSX2300
While the rarity of the model is undeniable—only a small handful of coupes were ever constructed—chassis CSX2300 possesses distinct provenance that set it apart on the auction block. Completed as the third Daytona Coupe, it made its competitive debut at the 1964 Tour de France Automobile with Bob Bondurant and Jochen Neerpasch behind the wheel.
CSX2300 went on to campaign major 1965 events, including the Daytona Continental, Sebring, the Nürburgring, the Tour de France, and Reims, where drivers Jack Sears and John Whitmore secured a ninth-place overall finish. Following the 1965 season, it became the only Daytona Coupe to continue an active racing career outside the factory program, traveling to Japan where it secured overall wins at Suzuka and Fuji in 1966 and was occasionally driven on the streets of Tokyo.
Historian Michael Shoen eventually tracked the car down and brokered its return to the United States. In 1975, Carroll Shelby purchased chassis CSX2300, keeping it under his personal ownership for more than two decades until 1998. This made it the only Daytona Coupe ever personally owned by its creator. Prior to the recent sale, the last public auction of a sister Daytona Coupe occurred in 2009, when chassis CSX2601 brought $7,685,000 with Mecum Auctions.
