The One Where a Cobra Eats Europe — (Daytona Coupe, 1965)

In the summer of 1965, a V-8-powered love song from California dethroned Ferrari, shut up the haters, and won America its first FIA manufacturer’s road-racing championship. 

Naturally, almost no one here noticed.

The Californian car was a gutsy experiment from a 28-year-old ex-GM designer named Pete Brock. Their story holds bootstraps, napkin math, and one badass stab at 180-mph immortality.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history. In this case, the short, brilliant comp life of the 1964–1965 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. 

Related Trivia: Want to read Sam’s never-before-published notes from track-testing a museum-grade Daytona clone at Summit Point and hanging out with Brock himself for Road & Track? They’ll go live on our Patreon today—link below!

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and a world-renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.