People
Shelby American chief engineer who ran the shop that built the Daytona Coupe
The record
American racing engineer who served as Shelby American’s chief engineer, ran its Venice race shop and made the rear-spoiler modification used on the Daytona Coupe at Spa in 1964.
Born in Santa Monica in 1921, Remington took pre-engineering classes at Santa Monica Junior College and worked as a component inspector at Northrop Aircraft. He served as a B-24 flight engineer in the South Pacific with the Army Air Corps. After the war, he ran a modified car on the California dry lakes and worked with Emil Diedt and Lujie Lesovsky, including three years in Sterling Edwards’s San Francisco shop.
At Lance Reventlow’s Scarab operation on Princeton Drive in Venice, Remington became chief engineer. When the operation closed in 1962, Carroll Shelby took over the building and hired him as chief engineer at Shelby American; Remington recalled it as a new job in the same place. At Riverside, he reworked the first Cobra’s failed rear hub, arranged new hubs from Halibrand forgings and sent the drawings to AC Cars.
Peter Brock designed the Daytona Coupe to give the homologated Cobra greater speed in FIA GT racing. Remington opposed the shape and assigned the first build to John Ohlsen, Brock and Ken Miles. After the Riverside test, he did not build Brock’s proposed adjustable wing. At Spa, he formed a rear spoiler from scrap aluminium overnight; Phil Hill set a lap record the next morning. Gurney and Bondurant won the GT class at Le Mans.
He told Hot Rod that he was never good at math and that the work was a hunt-and-try deal, grounded in experience rather than formal calculation. At Shelby American, the nickname STP, Super-Twitchy Phil, reflected his habit of assigning a job and then finishing it himself.
He declined Brock’s planned adjustable wing. At Spa in 1964, after Phil Hill said the Daytona Coupe was too dangerous on the undulating circuit, Remington formed a rear spoiler from scrap aluminium overnight; Hill set a lap record the next morning.
At the 1964 Sebring 12 Hours, Remington cut a roof opening in the Daytona Coupe after Dave MacDonald reported unbearable cockpit heat.
The stations
The house
Credited through Shelby American.
In the register
The files above are the register's own record of this name. The people index holds everyone the register credits.
In their words
“I read a lot of engineering books as I went along and learned a lot, although I was never good at math—it was always a hunt-and-try deal.”
Phil Remington · Hot Rod, 22 May 2013
