They were - or at least started out as - the ugly ducklings of the sportscar world. They forsook 20 or 30 years of technological advancements in motorsport. And they weren't as quick as what had gone before.
Daytona Prototypes had the odds stacked against them in our European eyes, but is it time to reinterpret the place in history of a class that bowed out earlier this month at the Petit Le Mans enduro at Road Atlanta?
Should the category, created for the NASCAR-owning France family's Grand-Am series in 2003, be dismissed just because a Crawford, Riley, FABCAR or Doran DP wasn't an Audi R8 LMP1 car? Nor that they weren't an MG-Lola EX257, the car that on occasion used to beat the German metronome in the rival American Le Mans Series in the years during which the DP class was establishing itself?