The
Cooper Car Company was founded in 1946 by
Charles Cooper and his son
John
Cooper.
Together with John's boyhood friend, Eric Brandon, they began by building racing
cars in Charles' small garage in Surbiton
, Surrey
, England
in
1946. Through the 1950s and early 1960s, they
reached auto racing's highest levels as
their rear-engined, single-seat cars altered the face of Formula One and the Indianapolis 500
, and their Mini Cooper dominated Rally racing. Thanks in part to
Cooper's legacy, Britain
remains the
home of a thriving racing industry, and the Cooper name lives on in
the Cooper versions of the Mini
production cars that are still built in England but are now owned
and marketed by BMW.
From Shortage, Innovation
The first cars built by the Coopers were single-seater, 500cc
Formula racing cars driven by John Cooper and
Eric Brandon and powered by a
JAP motorcycle engine.
Since materials were
in short supply immediately after World War
II, the prototypes were constructed by joining two old Fiat
Topolino front-ends together. According
to John Cooper, the stroke of genius that would make the Coopers an
automotive legend -- the location of the engine behind the driver
-- was merely a practical matter at the time. Because the car was
powered by a motorcycle engine, they believed it was more
convenient to have the engine in the back, driving a chain.
Called the
Cooper 500, this car's success
in hillclimbs and on track, including Eric winning the first post
war motor race at Gransden Lodge airfield, quickly created demand
from other drivers (including, over the years,
Stirling Moss,
Peter Collins,
Jim Russell,
Ivor Bueb,
Ken Tyrrell and
Bernie Ecclestone) and led to the
establishment of the Cooper Car Company to build more. The business
grew by providing an inexpensive entry to motorsport for seemingly
every aspiring young British driver, and the company became the
world's first and largest post-war, specialist manufacturer of
racing cars for sale to
privateer.
Cooper built over 300 500cc
Formula
Three cars and dominated the category, winning 64 out of 78
major races between 1951 and 1954. This volume of construction was
unique and enabled the company to grow into the senior categories;
it was with a modified Cooper 500 chassis, a T12 model, that Cooper
had its first taste of top-tier racing when
Harry Schell qualified for the
1950 Monaco Grand Prix. Though Schell
retired in the first lap, this marked the first appearance of a
rear-engined racer at a Grand Prix event since the end of
WWII.
The front-engined,
Formula Two Cooper Bristol model was introduced in
1952. Various iterations of this design were driven by a number of
legendary drivers - among them
Juan
Manuel Fangio and
Mike Hawthorn -
and furthered the company's growing reputation by appearing in
Grand Prix races, which at the time were run to F2 regulations. It
wasn't until the company began building rear-engined
sports cars in 1955 that they really
became aware of the benefits of having the engine behind the
driver. Based on the 500cc cars and powered by a modified
Coventry Climax fire-pump engine, these cars
were called "Bobtails." With the center of gravity closer to the
middle of the car, they found that it was less liable to spin out
and much more effective at putting the power down to the road, so
they decided to build a single-seater version and began entering it
in Formula 2 races.
Rear-Engined Revolution
Chevrolet-powered 1964 Cooper
Monaco
Jack Brabham raised some eyebrows when
he took sixth place at the
1957
Monaco Grand Prix in a rear-engined Formula 2 Cooper. But when
Stirling Moss won the
1958
Argentine Grand Prix in Rob Walker's privately-entered Cooper
and
Maurice Trintignant
duplicated the feat in the next race at Monaco, the racing world
was stunned and a rear-engined revolution had begun. The next year,
, Brabham and the factory Cooper team became the first to win the
Formula One World Championship in a rear-engined car. Both team and
driver repeated the feat in , and every World Champion since has
been sitting in front of his engine.
Brabham
took one of the Championship-winning Cooper T53 "Lowline" to
Indianapolis
Motor Speedway
for a test in 1960, then entered the famous
500-mile race in a larger, longer and offset car based on the 1960
F1 design. Arriving at the Speedway May 5, 1961, the "funny"
little car from Europe was mocked by the other teams, but it ran as
high as third and finished ninth. It took a few years, but the
Indianapolis establishment gradually realized the writing was on
the wall and the days of their front-engined roadsters were
numbered. Beginning with
Jim Clark, who
drove a rear-engined
Lotus in 1965, every
winner of the Indianapolis 500 has had the engine in the back. The
revolution begun by the little chain-driven Cooper 500 was
complete.
Once every Formula car manufacturer began building rear-engined
racers, the practicality and intelligent construction of Cooper's
single-seaters was overtaken by more sophisticated technology from
Lola,
Lotus,
BRM and
Ferrari.
The Cooper team's decline was accelerated when John Cooper was
seriously injured in a road accident in 1963 driving a twin engined
Mini and Charles Cooper died in 1964.
After the death of his father, John Cooper sold the Cooper Formula
One team to the Chipstead Motor Group in April, 1965.
Their final Formula
One victory was achieved by Mexican
driver
Pedro RodrÃguez
at the 1967 South African
Grand Prix in a Cooper T81. In
all, Coopers participated in 129 Formula One World Championship
events in nine years, winning 16 races.
Besides Formula One cars, Cooper offered a series of
Formula Junior cars. These were the T52,
T56, T59 and T67 models.
Ken Tyrrell ran a very successful team with
John Love and
Tony
Maggs as his drivers. Following the demise of Formula Junior,
Ken Tyrrell tested
Jackie Stewart in
a
Formula Three car, a Cooper T72.
This test
at the Goodwood
Circuit
marked the start of partnership which dominated
motorsport later on.
In 2008, the Cooper name survives (2008) in the chain of UK BMW
dealerships operated by
Inchcape
plc.
Grand Prix victories
Mini Legacy
As the company's fortunes in Formula One declined, however, the
John Cooper-conceived
Mini Cooper --
introduced in 1961 as a development of the
Alec Issigonis-designed
British Motor Corporation Mini with a more powerful engine, new brakes and a
distinctive paint job -- continued to dominate in
saloon car and rally races throughout the
1960s, winning many championships and the 1964, 1965 and 1967
Monte Carlo Rallies.
Several different Cooper-marked versions of the Mini and various
Cooper conversion kits have been, and continue to be, marketed by
various companies. The current
BMW MINI, in
production since 2001, has Cooper and Cooper S models and a number
of John Cooper Works tuner packages.
Coopers Garage
On 1 April 1968, John Cooper leased the building, 243 Ewell Road ,
to the Metropolitan Police and the local Traffic Division (V
Victor) moved in. They would stay there for the next twenty-five
years and 'TDV' would become one of the busier police garages. In
August 1968, they were supplied with the two Mini Coopers index
numbers PYT767F and PYT768F. The centre boss of the steering wheel
was replace by a speaker and microphone and a PTT transmitter
switch, was added to the steering column. The sight of a six-foot
bobby getting into the mini greatly amused the locals. The vehicles
were trialled for a number of months, but no orders were placed for
other garages.
References
See also
- GPL Driveable, detailed
simulations of Cooper's T81 and T77 F1 cars.
Notes
External links
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
