What happened to the Brock Coupe?

[rcweingart]

Little bit of history as I understand it to explain the name and design changes: I guess everyone knows the story about Jimmy Price convincing Pete Brock to design the coupe with Bob Negsted tweaking the suspension and all. The car was originally known as the Superformance GT coupe which then became the known as the Brock Coupe for obvious reasons. All the while Superformance and Shelby were in litigation, perpetual litigation some might say. Lance Stander then bought Superformance from Jimmy Price who continued to manufacture the cars at High Tech in South Africa. Around this time Superformance and Shelby resolved their litigation and part of the settlement, for business and marketing purposes, was that Shelby got a license fee for each car sold and Superformance got the use of Shelby's name where upon the name then became the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe under license from Shelby. Lance used my car for the photo shoot with Carroll when they introduced the car as the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. All the while factory modifications were being incorporated into the original cars, exterior door locks and such. Pete Brock continued developing the car, most significantly the removal of the acrylic side scoops and introduction of the glass quarter window. I had developed and installed power windows on my coupe which everyone, Lance, Pete, Olthoff, and all recognized as a really convenient feature so when the factory incorporated Pete's glass quarter windows and acrylic side scoopless design, the power windows got incorporated into the car along with the deeper dish and relief more original style wheels that Lance longed for. A lot of people thought that the original wheels (without going into the story behind them) were too shallow and plain looking. The deeper dish necessitated the shorter control arms trading, in my opinion, function for form. Most of you know the other design changes including the external door handles, trimless headlight covers (Pete Brock), thinner tranny tunnel allowing for the seats to be moved further inward (without moving the pedals although the steering wheel was relocated, all so that the driver is in more of an early Ferrari misaligned seating position). Enter Shelby again and for reasons know to them and Lance, the car was now a Shelby MSO vehicle and not Superformance and known simply as the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe (no longer followed by "under license from . . ." and with a CSX VIN. Hope this explains the metamorphosis of the name.