This standard Cooper-Climax T53 F1 was donated by Jim Hall to the IMS in 1969. It is painted to look like
Jack Brabham's 1961 Cooper-Climax T54, the car that began the rear-engine revolution at the
Indianapolis 500. The real car is displayed at the Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin, California.
The 'Cooper Car Company' was founded in
1947 by Charles Cooper and his son
John Cooper. Together, they began by building racing cars in Charles' small garage in
Surbiton,
Surrey,
England in 1947. In the late 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 sedans 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
Mini Cooper 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 cars 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 on the track instantly created a demand from other drivers (including, over the years,
Stirling Moss,
Peter Collins 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
privateers. Built with parts salvaged from military barracks and aircraft factories, and fitted with a series of different motorcycle engines, Cooper 500s won 64 out of 78 major races between 1951 and 1954. It was with a modified Cooper 500 chassis, a T12 model, that Cooper had its first taste of top-tier racing when
Harry Schell retired on the first lap of the
1950 Monaco Grand Prix. Although brief in duration, this entry marked the first appearance of a rear-engined racer at a Grand Prix event since the end of WWII.
The front-engined,
Formula 2 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
A rear three-quarter picture of a
Cooper T51, the first World Chapionship-winning mid-engined Formula One car.
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, 1959, 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. Their final Formula One victory was achieved by
Mexican driver
Pedro Rodríguez 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.
After the death of his father, John Cooper sold the Cooper Formula One team to the Chipstead Motor Group in April, 1965. John Cooper died on 24 December 2000
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.
References
★
John Cooper Works
★
John Cooper - A Very British Marque, A Very British Man
★
John Cooper: The Man Who Beat Italia
★ John Cooper (1977). ''The Grand Prix Carpetbaggers: The Autobiography of John Cooper''. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-03081-9
★ ''Cooper Cars'', by Doug Nye, 1983, Osprey Publishing, 2003, Motorbooks International
See also
★
GPL Driveable, detailed simulations of Cooper's T81 and T77 F1 cars.
External links
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