We report on the synthesis and preparation of oriented nanomaterials of single crystalline metallic Co nanorods of 6 nm in diameters and two different aspect ratios (7 and 15). They display optimized magnetic properties, with a spontaneous magnetization just below the bulk one, and large coercive fields (up to 6.5 kOe at 300 K) as a result of coherent switching (i.e., Stoner and Wohlfarth mechanism). We measured a strong effective anisotropy very close to the expected value resulting from the sum of shape and magnetocrystalline contributions.