r/They_Drove_That_Car

(Read the rules before posting) CSX2287 is the first of only six Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupes ever built. As the only chassis manufactured entirely at the Shelby American shop in Venice, California, it served as the aerodynamic prototype designed to break Ferrari’s dominance in the FIA GT class, by Peter Brock.
It was the first American car to successfully challenge Ferrari on the world stage.
On November 6, 1965, at the Bonneville Salt Flats, it set 23 national and international speed records.

Carroll Shelby sold the retired racer to Jim Russell (Russkit models) for $4,500.

The car was later acquired by music producer Phil Spector. Unsuited for Los Angeles stop-and-go traffic, the Daytona proved a liability; after racking up numerous speeding tickets, Spector’s lawyer advised him to offload it. In 1971, Spector sold CSX2287 to his bodyguard, George Brand, for just $1,000.
Ownership eventually passed to Brand's daughter, Donna O’Hara. For the next 30 years, the car became an automotive ghost. It remained locked in a California storage unit, untouched and unseen. O’Hara famously rebuffed all offers, including an attempt by Carroll Shelby himself to reacquire the car, denying she even possessed it.

In October 2000, the mystery turned tragic following O’Hara’s death by suicide. Her passing ignited a high stakes legal battle for the title between her parents, Phil Spector (who claimed he never officially sold it), and her friend Kurt Goss, whom O’Hara had reportedly named as her beneficiary days before her death.

During the legal proceedings, O’Hara’s mother sold the car to a neurosurgeon for $4 million. Although Goss eventually won legal standing and received an $800,000 settlement, the car remained with the buyer.
Today, CSX2287 is preserved in its unrestored, "as-found" condition. It is a cornerstone of the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving as a permanent monument to American racing history.

There used to be a video on YouTube of Roland putting in an amazing defensive display in his M3 at Brands during 1988, I wish it still existed because it was proof of Roland's talent. Here was a man who fought tooth and nail across the globe to make it in motorsport, only for it to end in the most tragic and devastating way.

A nice mirror is that David Brabham, Roland's team mate at Simtek in 1994, also ended up driving a BMW in the BTCC