By Chris Tropea
Feb 1, 2023
Few individuals in our scene can say they have a resume as extensive as Peter Brock's. In his early years alone, he learned from builder Max Balchowsky, helped save the Corvette program with Bill Mitchell and, perhaps most famously, created the Ferrari-beating Shelby Daytona Coupe.
To get a better insight into those experiences, we interviewed the legendary designer and Classic Motorsports contributor at this year's The Amelia.
6/15/22 5:57 p.m.
Amazing history! Peter getting to design the body at such an early age/ level of experience, and the tension between Ken and Phil. So cool to learn more about it all. Now we need a Shelby vs Ferrari II movie to cover the Daytona Coupe!
6/15/22 7:33 p.m.
In reply to fearlesfil :
Yup, lotta history in there–stuff you might not find on Wikipedia. :)
Glad that you enjoyed it.
6/15/22 7:37 p.m.
More from Peter Brock on Daytona Coupes over on the Classic Motorsports site:
The Secret Shelby Coupes That Never Raced, Part 1
The Secret Shelby Coupes That Never Raced, Part 2
The famed Cobra Daytona Coupe that almost didn’t win, as told by Its designer
Peter Brock on the Birth of the Spoiler
6/16/22 4:16 p.m.
I've been loving all the Peter Brock content here and on CM. The Daytona Coupe was my favorite racing car when it was new and I was an impressionable kid. But while Ford had brought the GT 40 out to the shopping center in Sacramento where I grew up, they never brought the Daytona. (That same shopping center, however, hosted one of the DB5s from "Goldfinger," with all Q-Branch mods displayed -- sadly, without demonstrating the machine guns.)
To my eye, the Daytona was reminiscent of the Zagato-bodied Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ that I fell in love with when I watched one zoom around Vaca Valley Raceway, a favorite summertime destination for my car-enthusiast family. That was also where I saw my first 289 Cobra roadster, handily winning its class over the otherwise-unbeatable Corvette of Herb Kaplan. Later, a Porsche 906 would trounce even the Cobra. Best of all, that Carrera 6, as we called them at the time, belonged to the guy who owned the gas station in Fair Oaks, the Sacramento suburb where we lived, so I got to ogle it when Dad filled up the family car.
It wasn't till April 17, 1984 that I finally saw a Daytona in person -- at Ford's 20th Anniversary of the Mustang celebration in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. And only a year or so later, I got to see Bob Bondurant reunited with his FIA championship-winning Daytona at Laguna Seca.
Thanks for letting Brock share these incredible memories with us.
6/17/22 10:28 a.m.
And a video talking about Peter Brock's BRE Datsun days is coming up.
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