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The Mini Mag. ..... Volume No.3 No.1.... 2001 |  |
 January 2001Volume 3 Index. | Article Index. |
Humble beginnings were how it all began though. With the support of father, Charles and his garage in Surbiton (south west London) and friend Eric Brandon, they produced for their own competitive use the first of the Cooper lineage using damaged Fiat car parts and a J.A.P 500cc motorcycle engine placed behind the driver. The year was 1946 and the war was hardly over, but soon fellow enthusiasts were finding their way to Surbiton to order a Cooper racing car that would in many cases help establish their own motor racing careers - Sir Stirling Moss and 1958 F1 World Champion, the late Mike Hawthorn indeed did so. Progressively Cooper racing cars evolved into different models and literally hundreds were built and sent around the globe, covering all forms of motor racing formulae. In the process establishing the Cooper Car Co as the first serious mass producer of racing cars.
Although as far as I am aware John Cooper only ever visited Australia on one occasion. Not to do a sales rep style visit to see how his racing cars were going - as they sold themselves, but to pay a surprise tribute on a man who had played a huge role in the success of the Cooper Car Co during the later half of the 1950s and very early 1960s - Sir Jack Brabham. The surprise tribute being one of the sneaky ‘This Is Your Life’ episodes produced to celebrate Sir Jack’s international motor racing career having taken 3 F1 World Championships’. Two of which were won when driving works Cooper-Climax T51 (1959) and T53 (1960) racing cars.
Many a Cooper race car had gone to battle in their contemporary days and here I was for Mini 35 about to meet their maker - John Cooper. A brief chat ensued, leading to an invite to visit Ferring and spend some quality time - chatting and pestering for that famous John Cooper autograph. As many will attest, something he would do for any enthusiast. Fortunately this was not the last time I was able to catch up with Mr Cooper (as I always called him - feeling that I didn’t really have the right to be so up front and call him John) as much letter writing (and even the odd phone conversation) from the antipodes to the mother country followed (and vice versa). Meeting the great man having only increased the mystique of my hero and sent me off on another tangent of seriously collecting literature and models relating to the famous Surbiton-built marque.
The magnetism I had for England drew me back there in 1997 - the Goodwood Festival of Speed high on the agenda, but so was catching up with Mr Cooper. Doing so at the Mini Cooper Register’s annual gathering of the clan at Beaulieu. Allowing me the opportunity to present an original watercolour depicting the Cooper Car Co as my gesture of thanks to him.
The passing of John Cooper on December 24 from cancer, sees the last of the pioneer racing car manufacturers of the first decade of Formula 1 - the 1950s pass away. With peers and adversaries of the period such as Enzo Ferrari - Ferrari, Tony Vandervell - Vanwall, Colin Chapman - Lotus and Raymond Mays & Sir Alfred Owen - BRM, we can with a gentle smile consider John has moved on again to revolutionise this front engine brigade.