I've just heard from Bill Hough, who gives some interesting background to the evolution of the Daytona replica(s) discussed above, especially the FFR, as follows:
"Here is the straight story. I was the person that did all the tooling for Factory Five (FFR) on their Daytona Coupe. They bought a Daytona Coupe body from R&D Engineering, a small company out in Nebraska, US, and started modifying it to fit their roadster chassis and made such a mess of it, they gave up.
"I took up the project at my own expense and got it to a point that the owners liked what I did so far, that they decided to go ahead and offer it as a kit. I ended up funding the whole project to the end. All I had to work with was a Roadster frame and a XJS Jag windshield. The windshield dictated the shape of the car from the "A" pillar back. The wheels, tires, and chassis width had a major effect on the shape. I was given full liberty on how I made the body look given what I had to work with. I sloped the nose down more for more downforce and dropped the tail down more for better visibility at the back. I didn't want the car to look like a Cobra Coupe with big fender flares. It was a challenge to get it to look like a Daytona Coupe and not look like a Chevy Camaro.
"Shell Valley Inc. just bought out the R&D Daytona Coupe tooling to make their kit. The one on the Forum (
the British American Daytona in the first post) looks to be an R&D body also. You can tell the R&D body by the very flat looking front. The story goes that R&D scaled up the body off a model car. How accurate can that be? The R&D body that FFR had to start with was way off on all dimensions.
"Upstate's Daytona is a dead on replica. Someone cast moulds off an original (
CSX2299? - Rob) while in a shop for restoration without the owner's permission. It's a long story, but in the end Bill Connelly ended up with the body moulds, and does a superb job of making a Daytona in kit form and turn-key form.
"When I finished the Coupe for FFR and it made its début at the Carlisle Kit Car Show in Penn., it was parked right next to Superformance Daytona Coupe. Many people stood there looking at both and came over and said they liked the FFR Daytona Coupe better. That made me feel good - but when Bob Bondurant and John Morton gave their approval of the car, that was all I needed! After all, the car was my interpretation of a Cobra Daytona Coupe.
"Part of the deal was that I got my own Coupe; Chassis #002 Kit #1"
"That's my story and I'm sticking to it!"
"Blue skies - Bill Hough"
Linear Mode
