Video: Driving $25m of Shelby Cobra Daytona in the wet

To answer the inevitable question before we go any further, yes this is an original one. Just six Shelby American Daytona Coupes were built and each of them is expected to be at the Revival meeting next month. The car you see here is the first to arrive at Goodwood and has travelled all the way from Argentina. We are very honoured indeed.

It gets better though. Far from being placed in a glass case and handled by men wearing white gloves, it has been filled with race fuel and yesterday was circulating a borderline-waterlogged Goodwood with none other than Le Mans veteran and perennially-smiling Frenchman Nicolas Minassian doing the pedalling. ‘That was hard work, let me tell you!’ he exclaimed. ‘The car is constantly moving around in these conditions because it is raining and because the tyres… well we don’t know how old the tyres are, but they’re not helping!’

Next month a set of regulation Dunlop Historic tyres will be nailed on to its gorgeous Halibrand knock-off wheels and Monsieur Minassian will parter the car’s owner Luis Perez Companc in the RAC TT Celebration race along with the usual field of some of the finest and most celebrated GT cars in the world, including Ferrari 250GTOs, AC and Shelby Cobras, Bizzarinis, Aston Martins and Corvettes driven by the likes of nine-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, Emanuele Pirro and Mark Blundell. Oh and forget the notion that they’ll merely be out for a jolly in those cars; they’ll be playing for keeps …

For yesterday’s test though the car was running on an old set of Avons which, as you can see from the footage, kept our pilot somewhat busy! Roll on September 13th and a grid full of machinery like this …

Photography by Ben Miles