Back in 1947, when Englishmen Charles Cooper and his son John (left and right, below) founded their garage to make tiny Formula 3 racing cars powered by motorcycle engines, British cars were just beginning to appear in America as part of Britain's postwar export drive. There would soon be Austins, MGs, Morrises, Sunbeams and Triumphs. But even by 1950, when the father and son team fashioned the radically streamlined, mid-engined, Norton-powered racer shown above, few Americans had heard of them. It's ironic, then, that their name still appears on a mass-produced English car driven by thousands of Americans, when Austins, MGs and Triumphs have vanished from all but vintage car events...
Prompted by a search for a simple, low-cost solution to winning races in the 500cc Formula 3, the Coopers picked a mid-engined location, not unlike the pre-WW2 Auto Union racers, with the engine right behind the driver. This produced neutral handling, and low frontal area. Soon young drivers like Stirling Moss, below at Brands Hatch in 1950, were scoring successes in Coopers...
The Coopers made a few Formula 2 cars as well, but decided on a front engine location, and because few engines of advanced design were available off the shelf, selected the aging Bristol* six, based on a prewar BMW design. At the 1952 Goodwood Easter race with drivers lining up below, Mike Hawthorn (foreground) beat Juan Manuel Fangio (in 2nd car from foreground).
Not long after, there were a few front-engined Coopers with Jaguar engines. These were quite fast; the Jaguar was far better suited to competition, though in a larger displacement class. The model shown below is a T38.
By the mid-Fifties several phenomena came together to change Cooper's fate. One was the availability of the overhead-cam, Coventry Climax four cylinder engine based upon that firm's fire pumps. In 1,100 cc displacement, it proved a good off-the-shelf racing engine. Another was the availability of disc brakes pioneered by Jaguar. Another was the rising popularity of small-displacement road racing cars in America's SCCA.
The 1955 Cooper T39 Bobtail was at the intersection of all these streams. Cooper mounted the Climax FWA forward of a transaxle from a front-drive Citroen, a clever, cost effective use of two off-the-shelf components. The alloy body's front and rear sections lifted to allow easy access for race mechanics. And the Kamm-inspired tail was predictive of race car aerodynamics half a decade into the future. The car was a success on the track, and prompted lots of orders from privateer racers.
During 1956 Jack Brabham modified a Cooper T40 Formula 2 car with fully-enclosed bodywork to take a Bristol engine. Unlike the early Cooper Bristols, the engine sat behind the driver. It was a prescient choice for the engine location, but the Bristol, a 20-year old BMW design with pushrods instead of overhead cams, was the wrong engine. The car was pretty, but unsuccessful. Brabham would need to wait a bit more for his breakthrough in a Cooper.
Cooper's T43 Formula 2 car from 1957 was quite a bit more successful. Weighing only 1,060 lb., the 91 inch wheelbase open wheel single-seater got 180 hp from the 1,960 cc Coventry Climax twin cam four. Stirling Moss signaled the coming mid-engine revolution by winning the Argentine GP (which was, after all, a Formula 1 race) by refusing to pit for new tires, beating eventual World Champion Mike Hawthorn on bald tires. Moss had won four F1 races that year to Hawthorn's one, and by protesting Hawthorn's disqualification on a technicality in Argentina, he allowed Hawthorn, who had driven a front-engined Ferrari, to win the '58 Championship by one point...
Motor racing journalists praised Moss for his exemplary sportsmanship. While the Italians had dismissed the Cooper as a crude device made by blacksmiths and with the engine at the wrong end, it had beaten their finest cars. Moss, driving a Cooper for privateer Rob Walker's team, had announced the coming mid-engine revolution for anyone who was listening...
Here is the space where Stirling Moss worked.
For enclosed-wheel road racing, Cooper made the Monaco with a 2.5 liter Climax engine, 2 seats, and purposeful alloy bodywork. The car was introduced late in 1958, and continued production into the early Sixties. Today it's a favorite at vintage race events...
After releasing the Monaco, Cooper followed their almost-victory in the 1958 F1 Championship with a new car, the T51. The engine was a larger version of the Formula 2 Climax, and the alloy body on its tubular chassis was a bit more aerodynamic, with a fin at the rear. Compared to its rivals from Ferrari, Aston Martin, and BRM*, it was lighter and with lower frontal area. And it was the only one of these with a mid-engined layout. The T51 below, was one of 3 purchased by the Yeoman Credit Team, run by Ken Gregory and Alfred Moss, the father of Stirling Moss, and displays the team colors. The cars were delivered after Jack Brabham won the '59 Championship.
That the team could afford to buy three of these is perhaps a tribute to the simplicity of the Cooper designs compared with its Italian competitors.
The cockpit shows the tight confines occupied by the driver. During the 1960 F1 season, the Yeoman team's best performances were a 2nd and 4th in the French GP. Drivers included Tony Brooks and Dan Gurney. The tail of the Yeoman car shows off its fin...
The T51 was also seen in traditional British Racing Green, with white stripes and tail fin, and it was showing these colors when Jack Brabham won back-to-back World Championships in 1959 and 1960...
Cooper's T51 was powered by a Coventry Climax inline four with dual overhead cams and 2 valves per cylinder. The 2.5 liter engine made 239 hp at 6,750 rpm, less than rivals from Ferrari and BRM, but the engine was reliable and the car was light at 1,175 pounds. Along with his Driver's Championships, Jack Brabham won the Constructor's Championship for Cooper in '59 and '60. By then Cooper made more racing cars per year than any other manufacturer. Not bad for a bunch of blacksmiths...
The Cooper team's T51s had a more restrained tail fin than the Yeoman Credit T51. This tidy, rounded tail was the view most competitors got of the blacksmith's handiwork...
In late summer of 1959, the year of Cooper's first F1 Championship, the British Motor Company released its Mini twins, the Morris Mini Minor and the Austin Seven. Chief engineer Alec Issigonis had designed the 10 foot long, transverse front-engined front-drive 4 passenger runabouts as the car for the working man. Soon enough, however, the little shoeboxes became a lifestyle accessory for fashionable types in Swinging London. John Cooper modified the car with disc brakes, increased the 848cc displacement to 997, installed bigger valves, and twin carburetors in September 1961, and added the Cooper S in 1963, in 970, 1,0071 and 1,275cc displacements. Cooper got a royalty of 2 British pounds per car; BMC sold thousands. In January 1964, Paddy Hopkirk won the Monte Carlo Rally in a Mini Cooper S. This example from the REVS Institute was built in that year; Mini Coopers would also win in 1965 and 1967.
Vintage Minis, and especially Mini Coopers, were a popular attraction at this past autumn's Colorado English Motoring Conclave.*
By 1965 Innocenti* was making a version of the Mini Cooper under license in Italy. It joined Italian-styled versions of BMC's Austin Healey Sprite, and quickly became popular. This version is from the early 70s. The roll-down windows with vent panes are a clue...
The next year, 1966, Cooper would collaborate with Maserati to launch the T81, its first monocoque chassis design, for the new 3.0 liter Formula 1. Maserati's 3.0 liter V12 was a bored-out version of the 2.5 liter V12 they'd produced for the final versions of their 250F, originally a 6-cylinder GP car. That year, Ferrari and BRM* were slow to make their new engines ready, and the Cosworth Ford was a year in the future. While the Brabham team's GM-based Repco V8 proved reliable enough to win the Championship for Brabham as driver and manufacturer, John Surtees won the last race of 1966 in Mexico with a T81, and Pedro Rodriguez won the first race of 1967, the South African GP, in a T81.
The photo below shows Surtees in Mexico; note how the front radiator opening has been enlarged from that shown on Jo Bonnier's T81, shown in Swiss colors above.
The T81 was not quite the last GP car from Cooper. After BRM* abandoned their expensive and complex H-16, they came up with a V12, and Cooper tried this in their revised T86, shown below, after phasing out the Maserati. They also tried an Alfa Romeo Type 33 V8, but 1968 was the last year for Cooper's Formula 1 efforts.
While Cooper's Formula One days were over, the Mini Cooper seemed to go on and on. The last original-style Mini, a red Cooper Sport, rolled out of the Rover factory in fall of 2000. In 2001, five years after buying the Rover Group and rights to the Mini and Cooper names, the BMW team introduced the new Mini 2-door hatchback, with a modern,16-valve engine mounted transversely and driving the front wheels in classic Mini style. Unlike the original Mini, neither the 5-speed manual nor the automatic transmissions needed to share their oil with the engine...
There were coupe and roadster versions for awhile, but the convertible and hatchbacks sold better...
BMW-built Mini Coopers are now available in a great profusion of models, including an all-electric Mini, a convertible, and 4-door, and all-wheel drive versions. Unless you think Jaguars are mass-produced, they are the only British-built mass produced cars (Range Rover SUVs somehow don't count) offered in the American market.
*Footnote: We took a look at Bristol's automotive efforts and their rare racing cars in "Forgotten Classic: Muddling Through with Bristol", posted here on Sept. 22, 2016. You can find it in the archives for that year. Innocenti's BMC-based two-seaters and their stillborn Ferrari-engined GT coupes are surveyed in "The Etceterini Files, Part 4: Innocenti 186GT", posted here on Feb. 3, 2016. BRM history received a picture essay in "The BRM Saga: Learning From History , Or Not", posted Oct. 15, 2018. We visited the 2021 Colorado English Motoring Conclave and posted picture essays on Oct. 2, 2021 ("Part 1: Rarities and Curiosities on 2, 3 and 4 Wheels") and Nov. 6, 2021 ("Part 2: Production Cars and Fast Plastic").
Photo Credits:
Top: Cooper Cars, reprinted by S. McKelvie
2nd: goodwood.com
3rd & 4th: nationalmotormuseum.org.uk
5th: classicdriver.com
6th: classiccars.com
7th thru 9th (Cooper T39): bonhams.com
10th (Cooper T40): classicdriver.com
11th thru 14th (Cooper T43): Ian Avery-DeWitt
15th & 16th (Cooper Monaco): the author
17th thru 19th (Cooper T51, lt. green & red): Ian Avery-DeWitt
20th thru 22nd (Cooper T51, BRG & white): bonhams.com
23rd (1964 Mini Cooper): Ian Avery-DeWitt
24th & 25th (Mini Coopers): the author
26th (Cooper Maserati T81): Wikimedia
27th (Cooper T81 with John Surtees): Motorsport Images
28th (Cooper BRM T86): Wikimedia
29th thru 31st (Modern Mini Coopers): the author
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