From Surbiton to Goodwood with Mike Cooper

Sixty years on from that epoch-changing ‘59 title – the first for a rear-engined car in F1 – GRR is in Hollyfield Road with Mike Cooper, and his son Charlie, to follow the Cooper trail. It’s one that radiates out from Surbiton first to Brooklands, then to Goodwood, via the top step of podiums at the highest level of motorsport in every corner of the world.

And we’re doing it now because that 60^th anniversary is going to play a major part of this year’s Goodwood Revival. A Cooper parade to end all Cooper parades will take to the Motor Circuit on each of Revival’s three days. Around 60 cars will be taking part, each one ­– from 500cc F3 cars to F1 cars to sports cars to racing Minis – with a story to tell.

“It’s going to be a very special, very emotional few days,” Mike Cooper tells us. Cooper Cars was always a family business and the Revival parade will be very much a family occasion. Mike grew up in Surbiton just around the corner from the garage which his grandfather Charlie started and father John turned into a world-beater.

“Dad was a great supporter of the Revival and worked closely with the then-Lord March to make it a success. His last appearance in public was at the Revival in 1999 when he drove a Cooper F1 car. He would be so chuffed we are doing this. My grandfather, my dad, myself and my son have all competed at the Motor Circuit, making us the only family to have raced here over four generations, something not even the Duke and his family can beat. I am very proud of that.”

Three Cooper F1 cars will be leading the parade, Mike in the 1959 championship-winning T51, flanked by son Charlie (a Mini racer but F1 virgin!) and David Brabham, representing his father Sir Jack who won the back-to-back F1 titles for Cooper in 1959 and ’60.

British touring car champion of 1966 John Fitzpatrick will get back into a racing Mini Cooper – one of a run of 30 reborn Cooper Ss that Mike Cooper is masterminding – while John’s old friend Sir Jackie Stewart will be behind the wheel of a Cooper T72. In fact the actual 1964 car which he drove in a test at Goodwood, famously impressing all who saw him – most importantly Ken Tyrrell who signed up the future three-times world champion on the spot.

Cooper Monacos, Cooper Jaguars, Cooper BRMs, Cooper Bristols, Cooper Maseratis and others will all be in the tribute parade. Plus expect to see a host of 500cc F3 cars – including the recreated Ivor Bueb team of 1955 put together by car designer David Woodhouse – and also a recreation of the Mini Cooper works team from 1964.

The oldest car in the parade is not a Cooper at all but an Austin 7, and there’s a picture of it hanging on the wall in the garage in Hollyfield Road, now being restored to how it was in period by new owners, the independent Porsche specialists Charles Ivey. The building needed a lot doing to it after years as a police forensics centre.

“This is the Austin 7 my grandfather built for my dad,” says Mike excitedly when he spots the picture. “It was taken at Brooklands when my dad was driving it around the circuit, until they threw him out. But then he was only 12…”

There are lots of other black and white photographs of Coopers, both people and cars, around the walls. Many have been donated by Cooper owners and enthusiasts for while this is no Cooper museum, it’s as close to one as exists, despite there being no Cooper cars here (think more GT3s and 959s!). There are no Cooper trophies either. They were all stolen years ago apart from one, for Brabham’s win at Spa in ’61.

The 1950s-built garage, with its distinctive curved façade, is safe at least. It’s Grade 2 listed now and being returned to 1950s originality, as much anyway as a commercial Porsche premises allows it to be. The last time Mike was here the place was a mess,  but now he’s delighted to see his father’s wood-panelled office back to how it was, and the old drawing office still in a shed on the roof.

Mike is also delighted that Charles Ivey – itself a racing-mad company with three class victories at Le Mans to its name – is happy for Cooper enthusiasts to visit. Charles Ivey proprietor Al Crego tells us: “We have had people coming here from Australia wanting to have a look around. For them, it’s a bit like a pilgrimage. As soon as I saw the building I loved it despite it being in such a state after the police moved out. Now, it is looking good and visitors and the Cooper Car Club are always welcome.”

The building, the pictures and memorabilia are sparking more memories for Mike Cooper. Of Brabham there working on the cars late into the night. Of his grandfather’s offer of a first “works drive” to a young Bruce McLaren – to drive the works transporter down to Monza. Of the little bridge over the stream out the back the mechanics used to get to the pub.

And of how a Surbiton family was suddenly centre-stage in a world of superstars – not just drivers like Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Roy Salvadori, Ivor Bueb, Roger Penske and Carroll Shelby, but Hollywood A-listers like Steve McQueen. “Steve stayed with us at home for a few days when he came over to pick up his F3 car,” says Mike.

The memories are made real by a recent find that Mike and Charlie have made among the boxes of Cooper Car Company papers – the original signed driver contracts.

“This one,” says Mike, rifling through a stack of papers, “is the contract with Jack Brabham for 1960. He was on a retainer of just £5 a year. But he did get 50 per cent of all prize money, so given that he won a lot of races it was probably a very good deal.”

Mike also has the original sales ledgers and accounts, with plenty of motorsport insights contained within. Such as winning the 1959 world championship cost the team £146,000. That Jackie Stewart’s T72 cost £1,325, and a 500cc F3 car was £728 – unless you were Bernie Ecclestone. He was the only buyer successfully to negotiate a discount.

Mike’s favourite line in a contract is to the driver who was borrowing a car for the Tasman Series down under. The car was free but only on condition that “if you bend it, you mend it”.

And his favourite Cooper of all? “The Mk II double-wishbone Cooper Monaco, such a beautiful looking car and one that with Roger Penske and Carroll Shelby used to win all the big sports car races in America.

“I also love the Lowline cars. My favourite story about the first Lowline T53 is how it came about when Jack Brabham and my dad drew the design for it when they were in the plane on their way back  from winning the Argentine Grand Prix. Jack had told my dad, instead of sitting in the car I want to lie in it.”

Just another example of how Cooper Cars changed motorsport, leaving a legacy that thrives to this day – not just in the new Mini Coopers on our roads and the John Cooper Works Minis that Charlie Cooper races, but also in the huge assortment of Cooper-designed and built cars that compete regularly at Goodwood, from the Monacos to the F3 screamers and all those pre-1966 Mini Coopers that delight everyone in the St Mary’s Trophy.

We look forward to seeing them all in the parade at this year’s Revival. One thing for sure, with Mike and Charlie guardians of the Cooper heritage, and the historic Hollyfield Road workshops now in safe hands, Cooper is one name that doesn’t need reviving…

Photography by Angus Peel and Motorsport Images.