427 Cobra vs. 250LM vs. Corvette Grand Sport

[ZOERA-SC7XX]

Looking back at page 124-131 in "Corvette Grand Sport" by Dave Friedman & Lowell Paddock, at Nassau Speed Week in December 1964, the Ken Miles 390 Cobra and the Grand Sport's of Jack Saunders and Roger Penske spanked the 250 LM's of Walt Hansgen and Bob Grossman pretty soundly. Spanked the GT 40's too. Miles took a solid lead before breaking, giving the overall victory to Roger Penske's GS. Penske won all three races that week and promply retired from racing.. The Grand Sport was rocket fast, as was the 390 aluminum block Cobra. The 2.5 liter Ferrari LM was hopelessly outclassed. Penske's win in the Nassau Trophy race was in Jim Hall's Chaparral.

[REAL 1]

RickLake: The Lister was a one off race car. While very fast, and I agree with you as to its performance, it was built in very limited numbers and was never intended to be sold for public use on public roads or homologated. The Maseriata birdcage, also was a dedicated race car and built soley for that purpose. It was never homologated to my knowledge.

While again the Maser and the Lister were very fast I don't believe they would have competed against the other three in the FIA World Championship series. Let me know if I'm wrong on this.

I chose the 250LM, Grand Sport Corvette and 427 Cobra to compare because it was those three cars that each of the respective manufactures (in the Corvettes case the Skunk works Chevy guys were hoping the guys on the top floor would build the car in sufficient numbers but as we all know the stuffed shirts at the top drove a stake through the heart of the Grand Sport project...sad) was hoping to get off the homologation runway in time for the 1965 FIA World Manufacturers Championship series for GT class.

Also I believe the upped the displacement on the LM so we would have to compare the final iteriation of each as they would have stood at the beginning of the '65 season and as they would have developed during the season. We can kinda take educated guesses where those two end point would be.

In my book the Cobra's with the Daytona's for the track in Europe with the longer straights would take the Cup at the end. It would be a dog fight but my money would be on old Shel' especially if we keep Ken Miles in the mix.

But hey, I'm admit I am biased towards the Cobra.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ZOERA-SC7XX

Looking back at page 124-131 in "Corvette Grand Sport" by Dave Friedman & Lowell Paddock, at Nassau Speed Week in December 1964, the Ken Miles 390 Cobra and the Grand Sport's of Jack Saunders and Roger Penske spanked the 250 LM's of Walt Hansgen and Bob Grossman pretty soundly. Spanked the GT 40's too. Miles took a solid lead before breaking, giving the overall victory to Roger Penske's GS.

From what I remember reading, that was a great story. Miles dogged it intentionally in qualifying, to start between the 2 GS vettes. There is a great picture, at the end of the first lap, of Miles way ahead of the 2 GS vettes and the rest of the pack, him about 30-40 car lengths ahead of everybody else. You see him up close, and looking down the straight, at the beginning of the straight you see the vettes and the reat of the pack all clumped together. Amazing difference in performance/driving . From what I've read about Miles, typical.