RIP David E Davis Jr.

 

     Of all the people I met in advertising, back in the mid-'60s, when I was a fledgling copywriter on the Chevrolet account, David E. Davis, Jr. was the most impressive. He was rotund even then and looked like a real life model for Mr. Schweppes, a mythical figure in a Vermouth ad, with a Victorian beard and waxed mustache turned up at the ends.

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE LONG LOST, THEN FOUND, DAYTONA COUPE

By Wallace Wyss


Back when I was writing one of my Shelby books,in the '70s,  George Stauffer, a prominent Cobra collector, told me there were six Daytona coupes built but, where the whereabouts of five were known, there was a sixth one that “belonged to a crazy old lady” who won’t sell.

He was talking about CSX2287, the one out of the six that was bodied in the U.S., the first one made.
 It is a very historic car. The first coupe built, the first to win a race, and immortalized by its fire in the pits at Daytona in February,1964.

The Origins of the Daytona Cobra coupe styling
by Wallace Wyss

A great deal has been written through the years on how distinctive and original the styling was of the Cobra Daytona coupe. And, having seen several up close, I can agree.  But any serious student of GT racing in the early ‘60s will see in the Daytona's lines other cars that preceded it and which must have influenced it, even if subliminally.