[Rick Parker]

In ths 60's when the 289 Cobra and Daytona Coupes were running, header and camshaft science was in its infancy. Dual pattern cams were not being readily used on the small block even though the exaust port flow is pretty poor comparativly speaking and the headers used were 1 1/2" diameter at the time. An example of very poor exaust design was the short header (no primary tube length) dumping into 3" tubes used on the FIA 289 cars. The reason they didn't change was two fold. The homologation design that had been submitted by Belanger (designer) had to be retained once accepted for homologation.
Secondly there actually isn't alot of room for anything different, until the redesign prompted by the 427 SC with the collector outside the body. Thankfully the aftermarket for the smallblock was stimulated by the modern day hot rod, the 5.0 Mustang. Now we have an enormous selection of headers, cams and cylinder heads in iron and aluminum. The only really different heads available in the 60's were the Iron GT40 (not to be confused with the current production item) head that became available during development of the Ford GT40. It had a significantly oversized exaust port and flowed very well by todays standards, and the other was the Gurney/Westlake head both being rare as hens teeth!

Rick...........