The 1963 Dolphin America race car that Ken Miles drove has been found after 60 years.
Californian custom car-builder and independent film-maker, Shannon Wafford, has discovered the Porsche-engined 1963 Dolphin America race car owned by Otto Zipper and driven by renowned racer Ken Miles, which has been missing for the last 60 years.
Shannon told CCW: ‘I’ve been working on a documentary film called Vector: America's First Supercar for six years and while researching the history of Vector I came across the story about Gerald Wiegert and Lee Brown (who also prepped the two Mustangs for the film Bullitt) using the Ken Miles Dolphin America as the base chassis to create the first prototype of the Vector W1.
‘Lee Brown told me that they cut the car into three sections after completing the Vector mock-up to make it easier to move and discarded it a year later when they had finally finished with it.
The body that I found and now own is easy to verify by its history and just looking at the 60-year-old fibreglass shell. The giveaways are the “Precision Motor Cars Beverly Hills” on the sides, the original Dolphin badge on the nose, the spot where the Porsche badge was, the shape of the windshield, the colour and the holes on the back end where the Porsche letters were once attached.
‘I’m now planning to show the Dolphin and a couple of Vectors at the premiere of my Vector film, which I would like to premiere at the Peterson Museum in Los Angeles.’