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Dave MacDonald tested it at Riverside
and promptly lowered the track
record.
By the time the 1963 fall series
began at Kent, Washington at the end
of September, Shelby American had
two Cooper Monacos (now called “King
Cobras,” having been given that name
by the automotive press). The cars,
driven by Dave MacDonald and Bob
Holbert, were clearly the fastest. Hol-
bert broke the track record and won
the pole position. However, mechanical
problems plagued both cars and they
failed to finish. Two weeks later Mac-
Donald won the second race at River-
side and he won again at Laguna
Seca. Detecting some customer inter-
est, Shelby ordered two more cars
which were purchased by Comstock
Racing in Canada.
Shelby ordered four more Cooper-
Monacos for 1964. The first one was
completed for Olympia Brewery heir
Craig Lang. The car was raced by Mac-
Donald or Holbert in several west
coast SCCA events until it was
wrecked by Holbert at Kent and to-
tally destroyed. Shelby ordered a
space frame to replace it and Peter
Brock designed a totally new body for
the car, which was built by Don Ed-
munds and Wally Peat. It was much
more aerodynamic than the original
Cooper-Monaco but used the same
chassis and mechanicals. This car,
dubbed the “Lang Cooper,” looked
svelte with smooth, crisp lines but as
it was going together, Edmunds
thought Brock’s rear “ring airfoil”
spoiler was too complicated. The same
thing had happened with the Daytona
Coupe. Brock had designed an elabo-
rate curved spoiler but when they ran
out of time, Phil Remington specified
that the Coupe be built without it be-
cause it had never been tested.
Aerodynamics had yet to be a
proven concept, although Brock had
an intuitive feeling it would work. Ed-
munds simplified the design as he was
building the rear section and left the
ring airfoil off. He was a superb crafts-
man and did a beautiful job of simpli-
fying the rear clip on his own. When
Brock saw the car’s flat rear deck he
realized that Edmunds had essentially
built a large airplane wing. And like
an airplane wing it would generate lift
instead of downforce that a ring airfoil
would create, making the car almost
undrivable at high speeds.
Brock explained to Edmunds that
it was like someone designing an air-
plane, and then the fabricator arbi-
trarily deciding, on his own, to remove
the entire rear rudder and stabilizer.
However, because aerodynamics was
in its infancy and Brock could not
point to any tests or examples which
worked, Edmunds’ rear treatment
stayed the way he had built it. Dave
MacDonald was intended to be the
Lang Cooper’s driver. He drove the car
only once before being killed in a fiery
crash at the 1964 Indianapolis 500.
Always looking down the road,
Shelby realized that while the 1964
Fall Series was still six months away,
the ante would be raised the following
year. A number of teams from Aus-
tralia, England, Italy and New
Zealand were already said to be
preparing new cars for 1965 with a
horsepower war in the offing. Small
block Fords and Chevies would no
longer be enough.
Shelby contacted constructor
Alessandro DeTomaso in Italy and
asked if he could design and re-engi-
neer the venerable Cobra small block
V8 into a 7-liter racing engine.
DeTomaso said he could and then sug-
gested the engine be mated with an in-
novative backbone chassis he had
designed which used the engine as
part of the chassis structure. He had
already constructed a car using this
chassis, called the Vallelunga, and the
concept worked; however it was pow-
ered by a four-cylinder Ford engine
that was hopelessly under-powered.
Shelby knew that two seasons was
stretching it for the King Cobras. They
would need to be replaced if he was to
remain competitive in the USRRC and
the West Coast Fall Series. The fact
that a car already existed using
DeTomaso’s new backbone chassis
helped convince him. Shelby ordered
six cars. He would supply the plans for
the body, based on Peter Brock’s Lang-
Cooper design, while DeTomaso
worked on the new 7-liter engine.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2016 30
Evolution: Cooper-Monaco “King Cobra” [
left
] was raced by Shelby American in 1963 and 1964; Brock-designed Lang Cooper was
based on a wrecked Cooper Monaco [
center
] and raced in 1964; Brock’s quarter-scale clay model for a the sports racer [
right
] that
was intended to replace the King Cobra for 1965 and was later used for the DeTomaso sports racer.
DeTomaso Identifier: the first of the “backbone chassis” cars, the Vallelunga [
left
]. Between 1964 and 1968 about 50 were produced.
The “Sport 5000” [
center
] was based on Peter Brock’s original P70 design. It was powered by a small block Ford engine. The P70
[
right
] never raced. Shelby pulled the plug before the car was completed.