Easily one of the most iconic vehicles of the wild 1960s, the Shelby Cobra is the holy grail for many car collectors and dreamers alike. Built in limited numbers with seemingly inexhaustible performance potential, real Shelby Cobras command a tremendous price on the auction circuit, regularly bringing over seven figures when the hammer falls. Yet even among these elite collectibles, there is a subset of Cobras that are even more desirable.

We’re referring to the 427 Competition Cobras, built in 1965 and 1966 for the sole purpose of winning checkered flags at the race track. Just 23 Competition Cobras were built for racing, and one of these enormously rare cars is heading to the RM Sotheby’s Biltmore auction in Arizona at the end of next month. Estimates place the price between $2.5 million and $3 million, making it among the most valuable cars Carroll ever built.

This particular car, CSX3010, was bought by Don Russell Jr. of South Carolina and came with a streetable exhaust system, shoulder harness, and road lights for legality’s sake. Even so, the 620 horsepower Competition Cobra proved too unwieldy for regular road driving, giving Russell reason to sell it to Peter Consiglio of Massachusetts. Consiglio raced the Cobra through the late 1960s, earning podium finishes in 8 out of 11 SCCA races in the 1968 A Production series, as well as the overall championship.

This Cobra would go on to be raced and sold several more times over the years, completing at least seven long-distance tours and racing at events like the Monterey  Historics more than once. In other words, this is one collector car that has seen its fair share of action. Should it meet its pre-auction estimate, it would be amongst the most valuable Shelby’s ever sold, though still falling short of the record $5.5 million sale for an original Shelby Super Snake in 2007.

There’s a reason they call them collector cars, after all.