The Cooper Car Company was a British car manufacturer founded in December 1947 by Charles Cooper and his son John Cooper. Together with John's boyhood friend, Eric Brandon, they began by building racing cars in Charles's small garage in Surbiton, Surrey, England, in 1946. Through the 1950s and early 1960s they reached motor racing's highest levels as their mid-engined, single-seat cars competed in both Formula One and the Indianapolis 500, and their Mini Cooper dominated rally racing. The Cooper name lives on in the Cooper versions of the Mini production cars that are built in England, but is now owned and marketed by BMW.
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Origins
The first cars built by the Coopers were single-seat 500-cc Formula Three 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 in the Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout pioneered by German race cars in the 1920s and 1930s—was merely a practical matter at the time. There was nothing new about 'mid' engined racing cars but Coopers led the way in popularising what was to become the dominant arrangement for racing cars. As the car was powered by a motorcycle engine, with its gearbox driving a chain, it was more convenient to have the engine and drivetrain in the back.
Called the Cooper 500, the cars' success in hill climbs and on track, including Eric winning the 500 race at one of the first postwar meetings 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 postwar specialist manufacturer of racing cars for sale to privateers.
Cooper built some 300 single-and twin-cylinder cars during the 1940s and 1950s and dominated the F3 category, winning 64 of 78 major races between 1951 and 1954. This volume of construction enabled the company to grow into the senior categories. Using a modified Cooper 500 chassis, the T12 model, 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 notable 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.
Until Cooper began building rear-engined sports cars in 1955, about two years after the mid-engine Porsche 550 was introduced, it had not become aware of the benefits of having the engine behind the driver. Based on the 500-cc cars and powered by a modified Coventry Climax fire-pump engine, these T39 cars were called "Bob-Tails". With the centre of gravity closer to the middle of the car, Coopernd it was less liable to spins 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
At the 1956 French Grand Prix a rear-mid-engined car qualified, the Bugatti Type 251, but this car, with a straight-8 mounted transversely behind the driver, proved to be uncompetitive and retired after 18 laps.
Two rear-engined Cooper T43s with the still-undersized and underpowered 2 litre Formula 1 variant of the Climax FPF engine attempted to qualify for the 1957 Monaco Grand Prix; only Jack Brabham succeeded, second to last and over 6 seconds slower. After crashes, Brabham raised some eyebrows when running third towards the end of the race until the fuel pump failed on the 100th lap. He coasted to the harbour and pushed the car all the way to and over the finish line. Despite being five laps down, he took sixth place.
Later that year, in the 1957 German Grand Prix on the very long Nürburgring, 1500cc Formula Two cars were allowed to take part. F2 regulations allowed closed bodywork, thus three Porsche 550A sportscars were entered from which only passenger seat and spare wheel were removed. The best F2 was the Porsche of Edgar Barth who qualified and finished 12th, ahead of some 2500cc F1 cars, and ahead of no less than six Cooper-Climax, including Brabham.
The first F1 win of a rear engine car, at the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix, can be attributed to circumstances and deception. In absence of most British teams, only 10 cars showed up early in the season in South America, one of them Rob Walker's privately entered Cooper-Climax driven by Vanwall driver Stirling Moss. Due to hot weather, the race was shortened, and all teams were expected to stop for a tyre change. The Cooper T43, with regular four stud wheels, was at a disadvantage compared to the single centerlock wheel nut of others. Moss took the lead while others entered in the pits, and then the Italian teams took it easy believing he would have to come in, too. They realised too late that the nimble little car would not pit at all, and the two Ferrari drivers started to chase him down, but did not manage to catch him.
At the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix, three new Cooper T45s qualified among the top five. When Maurice Trintignant won the race at Monaco, the racing world was stunned and a rear-engined revolution had begun, even though the front engine cars won all remaining races and the underpowered Cooper only added two podiums. The next year, 1959, Brabham and the Cooper works team became the first to win the Formula One World Championship in a rear-engined car. Both team and driver repeated the feat in 1960, and every F1 World Champion after 1958 has been sitting in front of his engine. It took some more years until all sports cars made the move that was pioneered by Porsche in 1953.
Final years
After the death of his father, John Cooper sold the Cooper Formula One team to the Chipstead Motor Group in April 1965. The same year, the Formula One team moved from Surbiton to a modern factory unit at Canada Road, Oyster Lane in Byfleet, just along the road from Brabham in New Haw and close to Alan Mann Racing. Cooper's 1965 season petered out and at the end of the year, number one driver Bruce McLaren left to build his own F1 car for the new for 1966 3-litre formula. Cooper's new owners held the Maserati concession for the UK and arrangements were made for Cooper to build a new 3-litre Cooper-Maserati car which would be available for sale as well being raced by the works team. The Maserati engine was an updated and enlarged version of the 2.5-litre V-12 which had made sporadic appearances in the works 250Fs in 1957. It was an old design, heavy and thirsty and the new Cooper T81 chassis built to take it was necessarily on the large side, in spite of which the bulky V-12 always looked as though it was spilling out of the back. Three cars were sold to private owners, one each to Rob Walker for Jo Siffert to drive, Jo Bonnier's Anglo Swiss Racing Team, and French privateer Guy Ligier. None of these cars achieved much success.
Jochen Rindt was entering the second year of his three-year contract, but with the departure of McLaren, Cooper had a seat to fill in the second car and with the team's recent lack of success, understandably, a large queue of potential drivers was not forming at Canada Road. In the circumstances, Cooper were fortunate to acquire the services of Honda's Richie Ginther, who was temporarily unemployed due to the Japanese company's late development of their new 3-litre car. After a couple of races, Ginther was recalled by Honda to commence testing of their new car and the American was no doubt more than somewhat chagrined to discover that it was even bigger and heavier than the Cooper. After making a one-off arrangement with Chris Amon (unemployed due to the McLaren team's engine problems) to drive in the French Grand Prix, Cooper had an enormous stroke of luck when John Surtees became available after falling out with Ferrari. Once conflicting fuel contract issues were resolved (Surtees was with Shell, Cooper with BP), Surtees joined the team. Cooper honoured its commitment to Amon, so three cars were run in the French GP. Subsequently, the team reverted to two entries for Surtees and Rindt and with the former Ferrari driver's development skills and a switch to Firestone tyres, the car was improved to the point that Surtees was able to win the final race of the year in Mexico.
Surtees left to join Honda for 1967 and Pedro Rodríguez joined Rindt in the team and immediately won the opening race of 1967 in South Africa in an unlikely Cooper one-two. This was a fortuitous win for Rodríguez, as he was being outpaced by Rhodesian John Love in his three-year-old ex McLaren Tasman Cooper powered by a 2.7-litre Coventry Climax FPF. Unfortunately, Love had to make a late pit stop for fuel and could only finish second. This was to be Cooper's last Grand Prix victory. The rest of the 1967 season had the team's fortunes steadily decline and the midseason appearance of the lighter and slimmer T86 chassis failed to improve things. Rindt, impatiently seeing out his Cooper contract, deliberately blew up his increasingly antiquated Maserati engine in the US Grand Prix and was fired before the season finale in Mexico.
Mini legacy
As the company's fortunes in Formula One declined, however, the John Cooper-conceived Mini – 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 livery – 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.
Cooper garage
On 1 April 1968, John Cooper leased a building at 243 Ewell Road to the Metropolitan Police and the local traffic division (V Victor) moved in. They would stay there for the next 25 years and TDV would become one of the busier police garages. In August 1968, they were supplied with two Mini Coopers, index numbers PYT767F and PYT768F. The centre boss of the steering wheel was replaced by a speaker and microphone, and a push-to-talk transmitter switch was added to the steering column. The vehicles were trialled for a number of months, but no orders were placed for other garages. The police subsequently moved out, and the building became a Porsche dealership.