One of Six Cars Built to Beat Ferrari
A 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe has just become the most expensive American car ever sold at public auction. Chassis CSX2300 brought an astonishing $42,905,000 at the Gooding Christie’s Pebble Beach auction on August 14, 2026. That didn’t merely edge out the previous record. It nearly doubled it. The former benchmark was the $22 million paid for Gary Cooper’s 1935 Duesenberg SSJ at Pebble Beach in 2018. CSX2300 also became the most valuable Shelby ever sold and the highest-priced automobile Gooding Christie’s has ever auctioned.
There is considerably more behind that price than a Cobra badge. Only six original Daytona Coupes were built, created specifically because Shelby’s open Cobra roadsters were at a disadvantage against Ferrari’s aerodynamic 250 GTOs on Europe’s fastest circuits. Peter Brock designed a dramatically different closed body around the Cobra mechanical package, giving Shelby the speed it needed to attack Ferrari on its home turf. CSX2300 was the third Daytona Coupe completed, and after arriving at Shelby American in California, its lightweight aluminum body was constructed by Carrozzeria Grandsport in Modena, Italy — not far from the rival it had been created to defeat.
CSX2300 made its racing debut at the 1964 Tour de France Automobile with Bob Bondurant and Jochen Neerpasch. It won the opening stages before mechanical failures ended its run, including a broken crankshaft while the car was competing at Le Mans. Ferrari ultimately retained the GT championship that year, but Shelby had demonstrated that the Daytona Coupe could challenge the 250 GTO. The following season, the Americans came back determined to finish the job.
This Shelby Helped America Beat Ferrari
Repainted in the now-iconic Guardsman Blue for 1965, CSX2300 raced at Daytona, Sebring, the Nürburgring and Reims as part of Shelby American’s campaign for the FIA GT World Championship. It finished third in class at Daytona and Sebring and again at the Nürburgring. At Reims, things became considerably more dramatic when the car suffered a connecting-rod failure during the 12-hour race. Instead of retiring it, mechanics improvised a repair and sent the wounded Daytona Coupe back onto the track. It eventually finished ninth overall and second in class.
That finish mattered. Shelby American secured the 1965 FIA World Manufacturers’ Championship for GT cars, accomplishing the mission for which the Daytona Coupe had been created and beating Ferrari on the international stage. The victory became one of the defining moments of Carroll Shelby’s career and helped turn the Daytona Coupe into one of America’s most important racing cars. Shelby American notes that its championship made it the only American vehicle manufacturer to capture that particular world GT title.
Yet CSX2300’s story didn’t end when Shelby’s factory racing program moved on. Sold after the 1965 season, the car eventually went to Japan, where it continued competing years after the other Daytona Coupes had largely retired. It won races at Suzuka and Fuji in 1966 and remained active in Japanese motorsport through 1968. At one point, its competition engine was replaced by a more ordinary Ford V8 and the former world-championship racer was registered for street use, turning one of Shelby’s most exotic racing machines into an extraordinarily unlikely road car on the streets of Japan.
Carroll Shelby Bought His Own Race Car Back
By the early 1970s, Shelby historian Michael Shoen had tracked CSX2300 down in Japan. In 1975, he helped arrange its return to the United States — with a particularly appropriate buyer waiting for it: Carroll Shelby himself. Of the six Daytona Coupes built, CSX2300 became the only example Shelby personally owned. He kept it for more than two decades and had Cobra specialist Mike McCluskey restore it to its 1965 configuration with the proper 289-cubic-inch Ford V8 and T10 gearbox.
Later restorations deliberately preserved some evidence of the car’s extraordinary life rather than making it appear factory-new. According to Gooding Christie’s, traces of the damage it received during the 1965 Sebring race and markings from its time registered in Japan remain on the car. It has also continued to be used rather than permanently hidden in a collection, appearing at historic events including the Goodwood Revival, Tour Auto and Goodwood Festival of Speed. It even appeared at the Festival of Speed again in 2026 before heading to Pebble Beach.
Gooding Christie’s estimated CSX2300 at more than $25 million before the sale. Instead, bidding pushed the final all-in figure to $42.905 million, beating the previous American-car auction record by more than $20 million. It is an extraordinary amount of money for any automobile, but CSX2300 offers a combination few cars can match: one of six built, genuine international competition history, a role in defeating Ferrari for a world championship, an unusual second racing career in Japan and decades of personal ownership by Carroll Shelby himself. Sixty-two years after Shelby built it to take on Ferrari, the Daytona Coupe managed to beat another collection of European exotics — this time on the auction block.
