Rock Legend Insists Rare Car Still His

A bizarre legal battle over a long-lost, $4-million race car took yet another strange twist Tuesday when a lawyer for Phil Spector contended that the pop music legend still owns the rare 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe.

“Mr. Spector is the owner of the Cobra,” Peter C. Sheridan, an attorney for Spector, said Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court. “He never gave it or sold it to anyone.”

Sheridan later declined further comment, referring questions to Spector attorney Robert Shapiro. Shapiro said in a telephone interview that he planned to file court papers arguing that Spector believed the car had been stored on his behalf nearly 30 years ago and was unaware it had been sold.

Spector’s claim came during what was to have been a routine court appearance in a civil lawsuit over the sale of the car. The key issue is who owned the car following the suicide last year of Donna O’Hara, who had kept the legendary Cobra in storage for nearly 30 years.

Longtime family friend Kurt Goss of Anaheim said O’Hara, who lived in La Habra, gave him the car a few days before she burned herself to death Oct. 22 on a Fullerton horse trail.

But O’Hara’s mother, Dorothy Brand of San Diego, argued that there is no proof O’Hara gave the car to Goss. O’Hara died without a will, and Brand argued that as her daughter’s closest living relative, the car is hers.

So Brand sold it for $3 million in January to a Montecito rare-car dealer, who resold it days later to a Philadelphia collector for an estimated $4 million.

How O’Hara came to have the car remains murky.

The Cobra, known as the CSX2287, was built in 1964 by racing legend Carroll Shelby and set land speed records.

It was sold in 1965, but the initial buyer soon sold it to Spector.

Those involved in the case said O’Hara’s father, George Brand, was Spector’s former bodyguard and that he bought the car for $1,000 around 1970, when the reclusive music producer planned to scrap it rather than pay for repairs.

Shapiro said Brand actually was Spector’s house manager. He said Spector “neither sold nor gave” the car to Brand, but turned it over to Brand to place in storage.

Asked how someone could not realize one of his cars was missing for nearly three decades, Shapiro said the CSX2287 was an investment.

“Isn’t that the definition of an heirloom?” Shapiro said. “This isn’t a man who gets in his car every morning and checks his oil and pressure and drives it to work. He is the most prolific producer in the history of music and he’s extremely focused on his work. He delegates most of these things to other people.”

Shapiro said Spector hoped to have the court order either the car or the proceeds of its sale--about $4 million--be turned over to him.

Brand said his claim surprised her. “It just gets thicker and thicker.”