1953 Sebring Race

What do you do when you are a very wealthy neurosurgeon with a huge collection of classic race cars? You pick out a handful of any of the 60 or so cars you own and take them out to the back lot for a spin, of course!

Or at least you do when your name is Dr. Frederick Simeone.

Last Saturday, my Dad and I went to the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum who motto is, "Celebrating the Spirit of Competition", to see an event called, "Tribute to Sebring".

While Watkins Glen (New York) brought sports car racing back to the U.S. after WWII, it was the Sebring (Florida) 12-hour race that brought international racing to the States. The race was founded by Russian expatriate Alex Ulmann on an abandoned WWII training air field located in the middle of central Florida orange groves.

Because it was run on the old concrete runways, Sebring was extremely hard on drivers as well as cars. It had two very long straights that enabled the cars to reach high speeds, making good brakes essential.

Four cars from the museum's collection - Three, a Cunningham C4R, and C- and D-Type Jaguars - that competed at the famous Sebring 12-Hour race, and a 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe were driven around the back lot of the museum and then the admiring folks in attendance got to see the cars with their hoods up. My Dad, a mechanical engineer from MIT and a unabashed "motor nut," was in heaven!

The basic concept established in the light-weight, custom hand-built Cunningham C4R laid the groundwork for America's two best known sports cars, the Corvette (1953) and the Cobra (1962). In fact, the fathers of the Corvette (Zora Arkus-Duntov) and the Cobra (Carroll Shelby) both raced, and lost to, Cunninghams at Le Mans (1950 - 54). After seeing the Cunninghams in action, they took his approach with their own cars.

The 1953 Jaguar C-Type finished 3rd driven by Sherwood Johnson, the same year a Cunningham C4R won. In 1956, another Jaguar - a D-Type - again finished 3rd driven by Indy 500-winner Bob Sweikert.

The two Jaguars are simply superlative mechanical works of art. A fifty-seven(!) year old C-type can set you back $200,000. However, a 1952 Jaguar C-Type that was originally owned and raced by the late Phil Hill was sold last year in an auction where the bidding immediately passed $1,000,000 on its way to a $2,530,000 final selling price. A 1957 D-Type recently sold for $3,740,000.

The Cobra Daytona Coupe is one of the rarest sports racing cars in the world. It is the first of only six Coupes to be built and was the first one to race, at the Daytona Continental, and the last to race, at Bonneville where it set 23 land speed records. A Cobra Daytona Coupe was recently priced at $6,800,000!

I would really, really hate to have an accident driving one of these things!

Anyway, for those of you that couldn't be there I prepared a little video. The white car is the CR4, the two silver cars are the Jaguars, and the blue and white car is the Cobra.


Let the good times roll, after you triple-check that your car insurance is paid up!