A superb and rare photograph of the nr. 11 AC Cobra with rider Dan Gurney, as seen in action
during the 1964 12 Hours of Sebring
which was ridden on March 21, 1964. Dan Gurney teamed
up with Bob Johnson for the
race, they were entered for the race by Shelby
American Corporation and were driving a AC Cobra roadster.
The number 11 car is
shown, which was a Shelby Cobra –
Ford / AC Cobra – Ford type Roadster; entered for the race by Shelby American Corporation. Race: Sebring 12 Hours of 1964. Date of image: March 21, 1964. Rider: Gurney (with Johnson). Location image was
taken: Sebring Hairpin.
Despite a race accident they finished the race
in their class (GT 5.0) in 5TH place
and overall they finished 10TH.
The GT 5.0 race was won by Holbert and MacDonald in a AC Daytona Cobra Coupe. The
overall race was won by Parkes and Maglioli in a Ferrari 275P.
A very rare and very historic photograph to own, it would look
wonderfully framed and it would make a magnificent and very special gift!
We also have a few photographs available of different Cobra final
assembly stages, all taken in Shelby’s Carter Street facility in Venice, CA. in 1964. Also
racing images of various events. Even some of the AC Daytona Cobra Coupe a.k.a.
AC Daytona Coupe (of 1963).
Sebring started life
as a United States Army Air Forces training base. From 1941 to 1946, pilots
learned to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress. After World War II, aeronautical
engineer Alec Ullman, seeking sites to restore military aircraft for civilian
use, saw potential in Hendricks' runways to stage a sports car endurance race,
similar to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Sebring's
first race was held on New Year's Eve of 1950. The Sam Collier 6 Hour Memorial
race was won by Frits Koster and Ralph Deshon in a Crosley Hot Shot. This first
race attracted thirty racecars from across North America. The first
12 Hours of Sebring was held on March 15th,
1952, and would grow to be a major international race. In 1959,
the racetrack hosted the first Formula One United States Grand Prix. Due to the
poor attendance and high costs, the next United States Grand Prix was held at Riverside. For much of
Sebring's history, the track followed a 5.38 mile (8.66
km) layout, these days the course of the track is 3.7 miles (5.95
km) long. It is a seventeen-turn road course with
long straights, several high-speed corners, and very technical slower corners.
Many of the turns and points along the track are named for the early teams and
drivers. There is very little elevation change around the track and little
camber on the surface, providing a challenging track for drivers, especially
when it rains. Sebring is renowned for its rough surface. The course still runs
on old sections of World War II-era landing fields that were constructed of
concrete sections with large seams. The transitions between sections are quite
rough and often, sparks fly from the undercarriages of the cars as they
traverse them. Much of the track has intentionally been left with its original
concrete runway surface. The track surface has 2.4 miles of asphalt and 1.2 miles of concrete. The 12
Hours of Sebring race has a rich history, as legendary drivers such as Mario Andretti,
Briggs Cunningham, Juan Manuel Fangio, A.J. Foyt, Jacky Ickx, Stirling Moss and
Lake Underwood, and
manufacturers such as Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Jaguar, Cunningham, Audi and Ford
have all been victorious. It is known as an excellent preparation for the
famous 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The AC Cobra,
also known as the Shelby Cobra
, is an Anglo-American sports car that was produced during the 1960s. Like many
British specialist manufacturers, AC Cars had been using the smooth, refined Bristol straight-6
engine in its small-volume production, including its AC Ace 2-seater roadster.
This had a hand-built body with a steel tube frame, and aluminium body panels
that were made using English wheeling machines. The engine was a pre-World War
II design of BMW which by the 1960s was considered dated. Bristol decided in
1961 to cease production of its engine and instead to use Chrysler 331 cid (5.4
L) V8 engines. Although untrue, it is commonly
believed that AC was left without a future source of power and that American
ex-racing driver Carroll Shelby saved the company from bankruptcy. AC started
using the 2.6 litre Ford Zephyr
engine in its cars. In September 1961, Shelby airmailed AC
a letter asking them if they would build him a car modified to accept a V8
engine. AC agreed, provided a suitable engine could be found. He first went to
Chevrolet to see if they would provide him with engines, but not wanting to add
competition to the Corvette they said no. Ford however, wanted a car that could
compete with the Corvette and they happened to have a brand new thin-wall
small-block engine which could be used in this endeavour. It was Ford's 260 in³
HiPo (4.2 L) engine - a
new lightweight, thin-wall cast small-block V8 tuned for high performance. In
January 1962 mechanics at AC Cars in Thames Ditton, Surrey fitted the
prototype chassis CSX0001 with a 221ci Ford V8. After testing and modification,
the engine and transmission were removed and the chassis was air-freighted to Shelby in Los Angeles on 2 February 1962. His team
fitted it with an engine and transmission in less than eight hours at Dean
Moon's shop in Santa Fe Springs, California, and began
road-testing. Production proved to be easy, since AC had already made most of
the modifications needed for the small-block V8 when they installed the 2.6 litre Ford Zephyr engine,
including the extensive rework of the AC Ace's front end. The most important
modification was the fitting of a stronger rear differential to handle the
increased engine power. A Salisbury 4HU unit
with inboard disk brakes to reduce unsprung weight was chosen instead of the
old ENV unit. It was the same unit used on the Jaguar E-Type. On the production
version, the inboard brakes were moved outboard to reduce cost. The only
modification of the front end of the first Cobra from that of the AC Ace 2.6
was the steering box, which had to be moved outward to clear the wider V8
motor. The first 75 Cobra Mark I (including the prototype) were fitted with the
260 engine (4.2 L). The
remaining 51 Mark I model were fitted with a larger version of the Windsor Ford
engine, the 289 in³ (4.7 L) V8. In late
1962 Alan Turner, AC's chief engineer completed a major design change of the
car's front end and was able to fit it with rack and pinion steering while
still using transverse leaf spring suspension. The new car entered production
in early 1963 and was designated Mark II. The steering rack was borrowed from
the MGB while the new steering column came from the VW Beetle. About 528 Mark
II Cobras were produced to the summer of 1965 (the last US-bound Mark II was
produced in November 1964). By 1963 the leaf-spring Cobra was losing its supremacy
in racing. Shelby tried
fitting a larger Ford FE engine of 390 in³. Ken Miles drove and raced the
FE-powered Mark II and pronounced the car was virtually undrivable, naming it
"The Turd." A new chassis was developed and designated Mark III. The
new car was designed in cooperation with Ford in Detroit. A new
chassis was built using 4" main chassis tubes (up from 3") and coil
spring suspension all around. The new car also had wide fenders and a larger
radiator opening. It was powered by the "side oiler" Ford 427 engine
(7.0 L) rated at
425 bhp (317 kW), which provided a top speed of 164
mph (262 km/h) in the
standard model and 485 bhp (362 kW) with a top speed of 185 mph (298
km/h) in the competition model. Cobra Mark III
production began on 1 January 1965; two prototypes had been sent to the United
States in October 1964. Cars
were sent to the US as unpainted
rolling chassis, and they were finished in Shelby's workshop.
Although an impressive automobile, the car was a financial failure and did not
sell well. In fact to save cost, most AC Cobra 427s were actually fitted with
Ford's 428 in³ (7.0 L) engine, a
long stroke, smaller bore, lower cost engine, intended for road use rather than
racing. It seems that a total of 300 Mark III cars were sent to Shelby in the USA during the
years 1965 and 1966, including the competition version. 27 small block narrow
fender version which were referred to as the AC 289 were sold in Europe.
Unfortunately, The MK III missed homologation for the 1965 racing season and
was not raced by the Shelby team.
However, it was raced successfully by many privateers and went on to win races
all the way into the 70s. Interestingly, 31 unsold competition cars were
detuned and made road worthy and called S/C for semi-competition. Today, these
are the rarest and the most valuable models and can sell for in excess of 1.5
million dollars.
The Shelby Cobra
– AC Cobra cars had an
extensive racing career. Shelby wanted it to
be a "Corvette-Beater" and at nearly 500 lb (227
kg) less than the Chevrolet Corvette, the
lightweight car did just that. The Cobra was perhaps too successful as a
performance car and reputedly contributed to the implementation of national
speed limits in the United Kingdom. An AC Cobra
Coupe was calculated to have done 186 mph (299
km/h) on the M1 motorway in 1964, driven by Jack
Sears and Peter Bolton during shakedown tests prior to that year's Le Mans 24h race.
However, government officials have cited the increasing accident death rate in
the early 1960s as the principal motivation, with the exploits of the AC Cars
team merely highlighting the risk. Although successful in racing, the AC Cobra
was a financial failure, which led Ford and Carroll Shelby to discontinue
importing cars from England in 1967.
AC Cars kept producing the coil spring AC Roadster
with narrow fenders, a small block Ford 289 and called the car the AC 289. It
was built and sold in Europe until late 1969. This
car with modifications would appear again in 1982 as the Autokraft MkIV,
basically an AC MkIII car with a 5.0L Ford V8 and Borg Warner T5 Transmission.
AC also produced the AC Frua until 1973. The AC Frua was built on a stretched
Cobra 427 MK III coil spring chassis using a very angular handsome steel body
designed and built by Pietro Frua. With the demise of the Frua, AC went on
building lesser cars and eventually fell into bankruptcy in the late 1970s'.
The company's tooling and eventually the right to use the name, were licensed
by Autocraft, a Cobra parts reseller and replica car manufacturer owned by
Brian A. Angliss. Autocraft was manufacturing an AC 289 continuation car called
the Mark IV. Shortly thereafter, Carroll Shelby filed suit against AC Cars and
Brian A. Angliss, in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The ensuing
settlement resulted in Shelby and AC Cars/Angliss releasing a joint press
release whereby AC/Angliss acknowledged that Carroll Shelby was (and is) the
manufacturer of record of all the 1960s AC Cobra automobiles in the United
States and that Shelby himself is the sole person allowed to call his car a
Cobra. Carroll Shelby's company Shelby Automobiles, Inc. continues to
manufacture the Shelby Cobra FIA 289 and 427 S/C vehicles in various forms at
its facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. These cars
retain the general style and appearance of their original 1960s ancestors, but
are fitted with modern amenities. In an effort to improve top speed along the
legendary Mulsanne Straight at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, a
number of enclosed, coupe variations were constructed using the leafspring
chassis and running gear of the AC/Shelby Cobra Mark II. The most famous and
numerous of these were the official works Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupes. Six were
constructed in total, each being subtly different from the rest. AC also
produced a Le Mans coupe. The
car was a one-off and was nearly destroyed after a high-speed tire blow-out at
the 1964 Le Mans race. The
car was completely rebuilt and as of now is in private ownership in England. The third
significant Cobra-based coupe was the Willment Cobra Coupe built by the JWA
racing team. A road-going Shelby Daytona Cobra replica is being manufactured by
Superformance and Factory Five Racing, a well known kit car company. These cars
use Pete Brock's bodywork designs, scaled up to increase room inside, and a
newly designed spaceframe chassis, they are powered by Roush-built Ford Windsor
(Sportsman) engines. The Superformance Shelby Daytona Coupe is the only
modern-day vehicle recognized by Shelby as a
successor to the original Coupes. From the late 1980s onwards, Carroll Shelby
and associated companies have built what are known in the hobby as
"Continuation Cars", Shelby authorized continuations of the original
AC bodied Shelby Cobra series. Initially the car everyone wanted in a
Continuation was a 427 S/C model which was represented in the CSX4000 series.
This was meant to continue where the last 427 S/C production left off, at
approximately serial number CSX3560 in the 1960s. The initial CSX4000 series
cars were completed from new old stock as well as newly manufactured parts.
Gradually as the vintage parts supply ran low, newly constructed frames and
body panels were obtained from a variety of suppliers. The production of
chassis numbers CSX4001 to CSX4999 took roughly 20 years and many different
business relationships to complete. All models of Cobra produced are available
now as continuations. In 2009, CSX4999 was produced, concluding the 4000
series. Production has continued with the CSX6000 serial numbers, featuring
"coil over" suspension. The 289 FIA "leaf spring" race
version of the car is reproduced as CSX7000, and the original "slab
side" leaf spring street car is the CSX8000 series. To date most continuations
are produced in fiberglass, with some ordering cars with aluminum or carbon
fibre bodywork. In 2004, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Ford
unveiled a concept for a modernized Shelby Cobra. The Ford Shelby Cobra Concept
was a continuation of Ford's effort to bring back the retro sports cars that
had been successful in the 1960s, including the Ford GT40 and the fifth
generation Ford Mustang. Shelby Motors built twenty two 427 competition
roadsters. In 1965, one was selected and converted into a special model called
the 427 "Cobra to End All Cobras." The first one of these (number
CSX3015) was originally part of a European promotional tour before its
conversion. This conversion called for making the original racing model street
legal with mufflers, a windshield and bumpers amongst other modifications. But
some things were not modified, including the racing rear end, brakes and
headers. The most notable modification is the addition of Twin Paxton
Superchargers. This gave the car a claimed 462 brake horsepower (bhp) and 800
Ft pounds of torque at 3000 rpm. Officially rated
at 0-to-60 at 4.5 seconds, legend and lore have it as doing that in a little
over 3 seconds as one must lay off the throttle heavily just to get traction
off the line. Another non-competition 427 roadster, CSX3303, was converted and
given to Shelby's close
friend, Bill Cosby. Cosby attempted to drive the super-fast Cobra, but had issues
with keeping it under control. This was humorously documented in Cosby's album
titled Bill Cosby, 200 M.P.H.. Cosby
gave the car back to Shelby, who then shipped it out to one of their dealers in
San Francisco, S&C
Ford on Van Ness Avenue. S&C
Ford then sold it to customer Tony Maxey. Maxey, suffering the same issues as
Cosby did with the car, lost control and drove it off of a cliff, landing in
the Pacific Ocean waters. It is to be
noted that Maxey's accident was largely speculated as suicide. It was eventually
recovered and the wreckage was bought by Brian Angliss of AC/Autokraft. Since
CSX3303 was so badly damaged in the Maxey accident, it is doubtful that much of
the original car will surface in the restored version. Shelby's original model,
CSX3015, was kept by Carroll Shelby himself over the years as a personal car,
sometimes entering it into local races like the Turismos Visitadores
Cannonball-Run race in Nevada, where he was "waking [up] whole towns, blowing
out windows, throwing belts and catching fire a couple of times, but
finishing."
Dan Gurney has been a
driver, a car manufacturer, and a team owner at racing's highest levels since
1958. Gurney also won races in the Indy Car, NASCAR, Can-Am, and Trans-Am
Series. Gurney is the first driver to win races in Formula One (1962), NASCAR
(1963), and Indy Car (1967). The other two are Mario Andretti and Juan Pablo
Montoya. In 1967, after winning the 24 hours of Le Mans together
with A.J. Foyt, he spontaneously sprayed champagne while celebrating on the
podium. Apart from starting this tradition, he also was the first to put a
simple extension on the upper end of the rear wing. This device, called a
Gurney flap, increases downforce and, if well designed, imposes only a
relatively small increase in the drag. Dan Gurney's father, John Gurney, was a
prominent singer with the Metropolitan Opera in New York who retired
in 1947 and moved the family to Riverside, California when Dan was
a teenager. Young Dan quickly became caught up in the California hot rod
culture. At age 19, he built and raced a car that went 138 miles per hour (mph) (222 kilometres per hour
[km/h]) at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He then
became an amateur drag racer and sports car racer. He served in the United
States Army during the Korean War. After driving a Ferrari at Le Mans in 1958,
Gurney was invited to take a test run in a works Ferrari, and his Formula One
career began with the team in 1959. In just four
races that first year, he earned two podium finishes, but the team's strict
management style did not suit him. In 1960 he had six non-finishes in seven
races behind the wheel of a privately-entered BRM. At one race, the Dutch Grand
Prix at Zandvoort, a brake system failure on the poorly-prepared BRM caused the
most serious accident of his career (and a longstanding distrust of engineers),
killing a spectator. The accident caused him to make a change in his driving
style that later paid dividends: his tendency to use his brakes more sparingly than
his rivals meant that they lasted longer, especially in endurance races. Gurney
was particularly noted for an exceptionally fluid driving style. On rare
occasions, as when his car fell behind with minor mechanical troubles and he
felt he had nothing to lose, he would abandon his classic technique and adopt a
more aggressive (and riskier) style. This circumstance produced what many
observers consider the finest driving performance of his career, when a
punctured tire put him nearly two laps down halfway through the 1967 Rex Mays
300 Indianapolis-car race at Riverside, California. He produced
an inspired effort, made up the deficit and won the race (with a dramatic
last-lap pass of runnerup Bobby Unser). After rules changes came in effect in
1961, he teamed with Jo Bonnier for the first full season of the factory
Porsche team, scoring three second places. After Porsche introduced a better
car in 1962 with an 8 cylinder engine, Gurney broke through at the French Grand
Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts with his first World Championship victory - the only
GP win for Porsche as an F1 constructor. One week later, he repeated the
success in a non-Championship F1 race in front of Porsche's home crowd at Stuttgart's Solitude
race track. Due to the high costs of racing in F1, Porsche did not continue
after the 1962 season, though. While with Porsche, Gurney met a team public
relations executive named Evi Butz, and they married several years later. Gurney
was the first driver hired by Jack Brabham to drive with him for the Brabham
Racing Organisation. While Brabham himself scored the maiden victory for his
car at the 1963 Solitude race, it was Gurney again who took the team's first
win in a championship race, in 1964, again at Rouen. In all, he
earned two wins (in 1964) and ten podiums (including five consecutive in 1965)
for Brabham before leaving to start his own team. An Eagle T2G, the USAC
variant of the first Eagle chassis. Almost identical to its Formula One sister
model the T1G. In 1962, Gurney and Carroll Shelby began dreaming of building an
American racing car to compete with the best European makes. Shelby convinced
Goodyear, who wanted to challenge Firestone's domination of American racing at
the time, to sponsor the team, and Goodyear's president Victor Holt suggested
the name, "All American Racers", and the team was formed in 1965.
Gurney was not comfortable with the name at first, fearing it sounded somewhat
jingoistic, but felt compelled to agree to his benefactor's suggestion. Their
initial focus was Indianapolis and
Goodyear's battle with Firestone, but Gurney's first love was road racing,
especially in Europe, and he wanted to win
the Formula One World Championship while driving an American Grand Prix
'Eagle'. Partnered with British engine maker Weslake, the Formula One effort
was called "Anglo American Racers." The Weslake V12 engine was not
ready for the 1966 Grand Prix season, so the team used outdated four-cylinder
2.7-liter Coventry-Climax engines and made their first appearance in the second
race of the year in Belgium. This was
the race of the sudden torrential downpour captured in the feature film Grand
Prix, and although Gurney completed the race in seventh place, he was judged
too far back to be classified as a finisher. Gurney scored the team's first Championship
points by finishing fifth in the French Grand Prix at Reims. The next
season, the team failed to finish any of the first three races, but on June 18, 1967, Gurney took
a historic victory in the Belgian Grand Prix. Starting in the middle of the first
row, Gurney initially followed Jim Clark's Lotus and the BRM of Jackie Stewart.
A muffed start left Gurney deep in the field at the end of the first lap. Clark encountered
problems on Lap 12 that dropped him down to ninth position. Having moved up to
second spot, Gurney set the fastest lap of the race on Lap 19. Two laps later,
he and his Eagle took the lead and came home over a minute ahead of Stewart.
This win came just a week after his surprise victory with A.J. Foyt at 24 hours
of Le Mans, where Gurney
spontaneously began the now-familiar winner's tradition of spraying champagne
from the podium to celebrate the unexpected win against the other Ford GT40
teams. Gurney admitted later that he took great satisfaction in proving wrong
the critics who predicted the two great drivers, normally rivals, would break
their car in an effort to show each other up. Unfortunately, the victory in Belgium was the high point for AAR as engine
problems continued to plague the Eagle. Despite the antiquated engine tooling
used by the Weslake factory (dating from World War I), failures rarely stemmed
from the engine design itself, but more often from unreliable peripheral
systems like fuel pumps, fuel injection and the oil delivery system. He led the
1967 German GP at the Nürburgring when a driveshaft failed two laps from the
end with a 42-second lead in hand. After a third place finish in Canada that year,
the car would finish only one more race. By the end of the 1968 season, Gurney
was driving a McLaren-Ford. His last Formula One race was the 1970 British
Grand Prix.
The negative comes from the private automotive collection of one of Europe’s oldest Ford importerships
that was in business since 1905. We took
over the impressive literature collection from the retired last owner. It
consisted of a vast collection of mostly very exclusive automotive literature
of Ford and other famous brands in the automotive industry. There are a lot of
old negatives, both on celluloid as glass plates, in the files we took
over. We consider this material very
historic. Interestingly, a part of the
collection consists of racing images.
The non period photograph that the winner of this auction will receive is a very
nice and very rare photo that reflects a wonderful era of Shelby Cobra , AC
Cobra and Shelby ‘s automotive
history in a wonderful way. This is your rare chance to own this photo, it
has a nice large format of ca. 8" x 10" (ca. 20 x 30 cm). It
makes it perfectly suitable for framing.
Contact us for more AC , Shelby and other automotive photos!