The Missing Daytona Coupe Mystery

I think it is the strangest automotive story I have ever heard.  I’ll try to lay it out for you.

Back in 1964 Carol Shelby was tearing up the tracks in the US with his Cobra roadsters.  Nothing had a chance.  But on the European tracks with longer  straights it was a different story.  The roadster aerodynamics limited its top speed and the Ferrari’s would clean their clocks.  In 1965 Shelby was intent on winning against Ferrari.  Because Ferrari was allowed to enter a special version of their road car it opened the door for Carol Shelby to do the same.  Fortunately he had Pete Brock on his payroll and Pete had studied aerodynamic texts that the Germans had put together from years of research.  Pete also had a great eye for form and with the help of the Shelby crew they designed the Cobra Coupe.  It was fantastic and the chassis number of the first one was CSX2287.  Six were made in all.

The design was so perfect it allowed Shelby to win against Ferrari, but Ford was intent on LeMans and wanted Shelby to devote his shop to the GT40.  This left CSX2287 to get cleaned up and used on the public relations Cobra Caravan.  It even spent some time on the Bonneville Salt Flats with Craig Breedlove and Bobby Tatroe setting 23 international and national speed records.

Then it dissapeared.  It would take thirty years to turn up again.

Since Ford wanted Shelby to concentrate on the GT40, Carol put the coupes up for sale.  The most he could get for any of them was about $4000 without engines and transmissions.   CSX2287 was sold first to Oscar Koveleski of Autoworld fame and then to Jim Russellof Russkit slot cars who converted it to street use (sort of) and sold it to none other than Phil Spector.  Phil accumulated a lot of speeding tickets and also found the race car did not convert that well to the street, often becoming unbearably hot.  Phil took it to a shop to see about further converting it to street use, but the mechanic told him it would cost tons of money and offered to scrap it for him for $800.

Now here is where the story gets a little screwy.  Some say that Phil sold it to his body guard for $1000 in 1971.  The body guard, George Brand, then gave it to his daughter, Donna O’Hara, who stashed the car and wouldn’t tell anyone where it was or even admit that she had it.

Donna got divorced in 1982 and she retained control of the car. In the last couple of years Robert Lavoie, an attorney representing Kurt Goss a childhood friend of Donna’s, tried several times to buy it for half a million dollars, but she refused.

On October 22, 2000, Donna went under a bridge Fulerton, CA, with her rabbits and a couple of bottles of gasoline.  She poured the gasoline on herself and lit it off.  It took her 15 hours to die and she wouldn’t even tell the police who she was.  She just told them to “Shut up”.  It took over a month for her to be identified when friends reported her disappearance.

Goss claimed that she called him five days prior and told him that if anything happened to her he was to take care of her personal belongings.  Goss said that she wanted him to have the coupe along with three other cars of hers.  When he heard that Donna had died he contacted her mother and paid the outstanding storage charges expecting to remove the coupe.  The owner of the storage center would not let Goss remove it without legal authority and Donna had no will.

Meanwhile Martin Eyears, a rare car dealer from Montecito, tried to close a deal with Donna’s mother to buy it for $3,000,000.  Donna’s father suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and can’t help with the questions over ownership.  So Martin decides to sell it to a collector on the east coast for $4,000,000.

Then Phil Spector comes out and says he still owns the car.  Phil claims that he neither sold nor gave the car away, and that he asked Brand to put it into storage for him.

December 8, 2001, the legal battle ends.  Kurt Goss has been determined to be the legal owner and Dorthy Brand is to pay him more than $800,000, since she sold the car.  After estate and gift taxes Dorthy will end up with nothing according to her lawyer, Milford Dahl.  I suspect the lawyer will pocket enough to put a couple of payments on that beach condo he owns in Malibu.