Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe news - The £10m Cobra? - 2009

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If you liked the look of that gorgeous, shortly-to-be-auctioned Ferrari P4 we showed you last week, but prefer your classic racing metal in American rather than Italian flavour, how about one of these?

This is the 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe and, like the P4, it’s just about to go up for auction.

And it’s gonna be expensive. Seriously expensive. Mecum has predicted that the Daytona Coupe will fetch between – ready for this? - $10 million and $15 million (that’s about £6.8 million and £10.2 million) when it goes under the hammer. If it passes $10.9 million (£7.4 million), it’ll become the most expensive classic car ever, eclipsing the 1961 Ferrari California Spyder sold by RM last year.

Why so expensive? Because, like the P4, the Daytona Coupe – chassis CPX2601, and one of only six ever built – is a bone fide champion. This very car clinched the FIA GTIII championship in 1965 at Reims in the hands of Bob Bondurant against the dominant Ferraris.

Legend has it that Bondurant was offered the car for about $5,000 after the race, an offer he turned down because it was ‘a beat up old race car’. He probably regrets that now.

Now fully restored, the Daytona Coupe will be up for sale on May 18 in Indianapolis, courtesy of Mecum auction house. Will it become the world’s most expensive classic car at auction? We’ll keep you in the loop…