that car was in terrible shape if youd seen the pics. not much better than
the rabbits and the lady.
great story though!
-james
----- Original Message -----
From: Kelly, Katie <kkelly@spss.com>
To: <ba-autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 11:00 AM
Subject: Lost and Found Cobra
> From the San Diego Union Tribune...
>
>
> Katie
>
>
> Tragic road to a treasured car
> A suicide leads to a long-lost $4 million classic sports coupe, and a
> looming court fight
> <<...OLE_Obj...>>
> By John Wilkens
> STAFF WRITER
> August 1, 2001
>
> Car collectors often fantasize about stumbling across treasures in
unlikely
> places. A rare Rolls in a barn. A priceless Porsche tucked under a tarp.
> For the past 20 years, these fantasies have been attached to a historic
race
> car called the Cobra Daytona Coupe. Created in 1964 by maverick designer
> Carroll Shelby, only six were ever built. But that was enough to topple
> Ferrari and win a world racing championship, the first ever by an American
> team.
> One of the Daytonas sold at auction last year for $4 million. Another is
in
> a museum in Colorado. But for collectors, the coupe that mattered most,
the
> Holy Grail, was the first one built.
> Known by its chassis number, CSX2287, that car won at Sebring, a 12-hour
> endurance race in Florida. It was leading at Spa, in Belgium, when a
> sabotaged fuel tank felled it. At Le Mans, France, it was winning again
> until disqualified for a rules violation.
> In December of 1965, the coupe was hauled to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats,
> where it set 23 speed records.
> And then it disappeared from public view.
> Over the years, rumors circulated about its whereabouts. Most of them
> centered in Orange County on an increasingly reclusive woman named Donna
> O'Hara, who lived in La Habra, had a fondness for opera and rabbits, and
> worked as a clerk at a Sears warehouse in Santa Ana.
> She supposedly got the car in the early 1970s from her father, who
> supposedly got it from Phil Spector, the famous "Wall of Sound" music
> producer. Cobra legend holds that Spector collected speeding tickets like
> hit singles.
> O'Hara's father, George Brand, was Spector's bodyguard/house manager. The
> way he told it, Spector took the car to a mechanic for repairs one day and
> heard this estimate: $15,000. Spector blinked and called the junkman
> instead.
> The junkman offered $800; Spector accepted. When he heard that, Brand bid
> $1,000, and a deal was struck. He met the junkman at the gate and waved
him
> away. Brand eventually gave the car to his daughter.
> Or so the story went. Enough of it circulated in car circles that suitors
> would approach O'Hara from time to time. One offered $150,000 for the car.
> Another bid $500,000. Last year, a broker hired a private detective to
find
> the Cobra, and when the trail led to O'Hara, he promised her $2 million.
> She resisted them all -- even Shelby, the designer. He had sold the car
for
> $4,500 following the Bonneville exploits, but later decided he wanted it
> back. He got nowhere.
> "She just wouldn't talk about it," said Lynn Park, a Los Angeles collector
> who tried to buy the car from O'Hara. "She wouldn't even confirm that it
> existed. I think she knew it was valuable, but she didn't realize the
whole
> Cobra community was lusting after it."
> Her reluctance just fueled more rumors that the coupe was buried in the
> California desert or was in a private museum or had been destroyed.
> Or was sitting in a storage shed somewhere, its tires flat, its paint
> chipped, its mystique growing.
>
>
> Sometime in the morning of Oct. 22, the 54-year-old O'Hara left home and
> made her way about 2 miles to a horse path in a park in Fullerton. She was
> carrying two pet rabbits and two jugs of gasoline.
> There, in a culvert near a bridge, she set herself and the rabbits on
fire.
> It was about 7:30 a.m. when the first officers arrived. She whispered that
> she had done this to herself, that she wanted to die. She wouldn't give
her
> name. When they persisted, she told them to shut up.
> The ambulance took her to a hospital. Burned over more than 90 percent of
> her body, she died at about 6 p.m., still clinging to her secrecy.
> She stayed a "Jane Doe" at the coroner's office for six weeks.
Thanksgiving
> came and went. Her hands were so badly scorched police couldn't get
> fingerprints.
> Apparently nobody at work missed her; she'd walked away from her job five
> days before the suicide. Nobody at home missed her, either. Divorced in
1982
> and childless, she lived alone. It had been five years since she last
talked
> with her mother, Dorothy Brand, who lives in San Diego. Her father,
George,
> is in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
> On Nov. 29, the man who co-owned the La Habra home where O'Hara lived
> reported her missing. She had failed to make the mortgage payment. The
cops
> put two and two together and within days Jane Doe had a name.
> Not long after, Dorothy and George Brand went to their daughter's home.
High
> school sweethearts, they had divorced in 1968 after 24 years of marriage
but
> remained on speaking terms. Now they were together again, sharing the
> unspeakable.
> A man met them at the house. Kurt Goss had known the family for more than
30
> years, ever since a taste for billiards led him as a teen-ager to the
Golden
> Cue, a pool hall George Brand owned in Fullerton.
> Goss kept in touch with George Brand over the years, but he and O'Hara had
> little contact until the late 1980s. After a chance meeting at a store,
they
> became lovers briefly, then friends.
> He went to her house after the suicide to help deal with all the questions
> and details that linger in death's shadow.
> O'Hara left no suicide note and no will, at least not that anybody has
> found. Throughout her house, though, there were memos she'd written about
> this and that, bequests and instructions.
> There was mention of a dismantled 1969 MG, kept at a garage in Placentia.
> There was paperwork for a 1969 Datsun and a 1992 Chevy. There were notes
> about pool cues and a 150-year-old church bench and an antique sewing
> machine.
> And there was something about a 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe.
>
>
> The Holy Grail, as it turned out, was in a storage garage in Anaheim. Goss
> went there early in December with O'Hara's cousin. They opened the door
and
> there it was, under a sheet. It hadn't been moved in almost three decades.
> Goss paid about $300 in back rent on the garage, then returned a week
later.
> His curiosity was more than idle. As far as he was concerned, the car was
> now his. O'Hara, he said, had given it to him.
> This, from court papers, is how he claims it happened:
> O'Hara phoned and asked him to come over on Oct. 17. He went and she told
> him that she wanted him to have the Cobra, that she had always thought of
it
> as his.
> She told him that "in the unlikely event anything should happen to her,
that
> she wanted me to look after her personal effects," Goss said.
> The unlikely event happened five days later.
> After the suicide, Goss, at O'Hara's house, found an incomplete DMV
Transfer
> of Ownership document listing him as the recipient of the Cobra. There
were
> notes addressed to him. "I did this to avoid losing anything to probate,"
> one read. "I still haven't found the Cobra poster," said another. "Don't
let
> the house go until you do."
> Back in the early 1970s, Goss had driven the coupe a few times, when
George
> Brand was working for Spector. He said he loved the car. But he also knew
> what it was worth, and he started hearing offers.
> One of the bidders was Steve Volk, president of the Shelby American
> Collection museum in Boulder, Colo., which already has one of the
Daytonas.
> (The other four are in private hands.)
> "We've been tracking that car for 15 years," Volk said. "It's one of the
> cars that helped Carroll Shelby put American racing on the map. Before
that,
> we weren't a contender."
> On Feb. 17, Goss went back to the storage garage for another look at the
> treasure. The Cobra was gone. All that remained were four stains on the
> floor from where the tires had sat for all those years.
>
>
> In the weeks after her daughter died, Dorothy Brand heard about a man
named
> Martin Eyears, a broker of rare automobiles who lives in the Santa Barbara
> enclave of Montecito.
> He's the one who had hired a private detective in March 2000 to find the
> Cobra. The detective traced it to O'Hara, and Eyears offered her $2
million.
> O'Hara ignored him.
> Dorothy Brand didn't.
> "She is a little old lady, in her late 70s," said Brand's attorney,
Milford
> W. Dahl Jr. "She is very nice but extremely unsophisticated in these kinds
> of matters. She's very emotionally disturbed by the death of her daughter,
> and all she knows is there's this car that somebody wants to buy for a lot
> of money."
> Brand called the broker. They talked and made a pact on Dec. 16. For $3
> million, Eyears would get the coupe.
> They met at the storage garage in January so that Eyears could see the
car.
> It wasn't much to look at, with its flat tires, dented nose and chipped
> paint. But it was undeniably CSX2287, the first Daytona.
> There were a few details to be worked out. Dorothy Brand came back to San
> Diego and filed a power of attorney form for George, her ailing
ex-husband.
> It enabled her to sign for him on the sales agreement.
> Eyears wrote a check and took possession Feb. 7, loading the car on a
> trailer and heading north. Within days, it was for sale again, and the
> collecting world was abuzz. Photos were posted on the Internet. Potential
> buyers flew to Santa Barbara.
> Steve Serio, a resident of Milton, Mass., was among those who saw the car.
> He went with a friend, Alex Finigan, a Cobra enthusiast. Serio said in a
> court declaration that Finigan characterized the discovery of the car "as
> the most significant find in the United States in 30 years."
> By Feb. 18, Eyears had an offer. It was from Volk, the Shelby museum
> president, for $3.75 million. "It's a museum piece," Volk said. "Future
> generations should get a chance to see it in an unrestored condition,
close
> to what it was like originally."
> But there was another bidder: Frederick Simeone, a Pennsylvania
neurosurgeon
> and respected collector of vintage sports cars. He reportedly offered $4
> million.
> Simeone sent a check the next day. And the Cobra was on its way across the
> country, to the doctor's private garage in Philadelphia.
>
>
> Everybody has lawyers now, and nobody's talking, at least not to the
media.
> Two days after Eyears sold the car, Goss filed suit in Orange County. He
> wants the Cobra back and "would like for it to be displayed publicly,"
said
> Robert Lavoie, his attorney.
> It's clear, Goss argues in the legal papers, that O'Hara intended for him
to
> have the coupe. She put his name on the transfer document. She added his
> name to the lease at the storage garage, granting him access.
> The Brands and Eyears argue that O'Hara never filed the DMV paperwork, or
> gave it to Goss, and that she could have changed her mind. As her only
> heirs, her parents had every right to sell the car, they said.
> Spector has re-entered the picture, too. After a hearing in April, his
> attorney, Robert Shapiro -- yes, that Robert Shapiro, of O.J. fame -- said
> the producer never gave the car to George Brand, and that he has always
> assumed it was in storage somewhere, an investment gaining value.
> A trial is tentatively scheduled for November. A judge ordered Dorothy
Brand
> not to spend any of the Cobra money, but she's already given $1 million to
> relatives and charities. Charges of deceit and counter-charges of
deception
> are flying.
> "I think this case is so sad," Volk said. "Things could have turned out a
> lot better. It's a tragedy that Donna O'Hara didn't sell the car. Maybe
she
> could have used the money to turn her life around."
> In the wake of their daughter's death, Dorothy and George Brand are
planning
> to marry again. "I've seen them together, and they are like a couple of
> school kids," said Dahl, their attorney.
> Love can do that. So can an unexpected windfall. Or both. It might be as
> close to a happy ending as the story of a lost Daytona Coupe -- and a lost
> daughter -- gets.
> <<...OLE_Obj...>>
> Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
|