Legal Triangle Over Legend’s Race Car Ends

A classic Cobra race car has a home, and the man who claimed to be the legal owner has more than $800,000 under a legal settlement reached Friday.

The agreement, finalized in a Santa Ana courtroom, resolved a long-standing feud over a blue Cobra Daytona Coupe race car--one of six racing coupes manufactured by former world racing champ Carroll Shelby.

For more than three decades, the rare race car--which had set land speed records--gathered dust in a storage unit, its value quietly growing to more than $3 million.

Last year, the car’s owner, Donna O’Hara, committed suicide on a Fullerton horse trail.

O’Hara’s mother sold the car for $3 million. It was later purchased by car collector Frederick Simeone, a Philadelphia neurosurgeon.

That’s when O’Hara’s childhood friend, Kurt Goss, stepped forward and announced that O’Hara had promised him the car. And the legal battle for the race car was on.

Superior Court Judge James P. Gray approved a legal settlement Friday in which O’Hara’s mother, Dorothy Brand, will pay more than $800,000 to Goss.

Three charities who received some money from Brand chipped in another $15,000.

After estate taxes and gifts she has already made to charities and family, Brand will end up with virtually nothing, said her lawyer, Milford Dahl.

Reclusive music legend Phil Spector had also asserted ownership of the car.

Built in 1964, it was sold in 1965, but the initial buyer soon sold the car to Spector, who claimed he turned it over to O’Hara’s father, George Brand, to place in storage.