24th May, 2006 0:00

Syon House

 
  Lot 15
 
Lot 15 - c1959/60 Cooper Type 51 Single Seater

c1959/60 Cooper Type 51 Single Seater

Sold for £26,438

(including buyers premium)


Lot details
Registration No: N/A
Chassis No: Unknown
Mot Expiry: N/A

For 'Ol Charles' and his son John, 1959 looked very promising. The racing 'school' was a huge success run by Ian Burgess, one of Cooper's contracted drivers, and Mayston-Gregory, and orders were flooding in for their open wheel cars. In terms of Cooper history, 1958 had been a huge year! The Cooper had become the ideal privateer car for F2 and Formula Libre racing and the possibilities for F1 were within reach due to the changes instigated by the CSI at the end of 1956. These had extended the 2.5 litre engine for a further three years, banned methanol fuel replacing it with Avgas 100/130 octane and lowered the race distance from 500 km/3 hour duration to 300 km/2hours. To quote Doug Nye "Under the new formula cars could be smaller, lighter, less committed to long-distance endurance and in short could be built like Coopers and Lotuses." The Coopers were inexpensive, could be bought in finished or in 'kit form' without engines, were small and easy to maintain and accepted a variety of engines and gearboxes readily.
1958 had given the company its first real success, starting in great style with Moss winning the opening F1 GP in Argentina with the Rob Walker 1.9 Litre Mk2 Cooper. This race and the continued activities and successes of the Walker Equipe and Cooper works team, running in both F1 and F2, were to change open wheel racing forever and heralded the end of cars with engines at the front.
Walter Hassan at Coventry Climax had been prevailed upon to develop the FPF engine and from the initial capacity of 1.5 litres it had been stretched in stages to 1.7, then 1.9 to an eventual 2.2 litres at the end of 1958. The racing successes of these interim engines and the persistence of Cooper and Chapman persuaded Hassan to further develop the engine to the full 2.5 litres for 1959 F1 season. The new engine would need some time to become reliable and with supply virtually limited to the works Cooper and Lotus cars, privateers wanting to contest F1 had to settle for 2.2 litre Climax or look elsewhere.
It was in this scenario that the car we have on offer for you today was manufactured.
It would be lovely to say that we know everything about this car but the truth is that we don't. It has no chassis number or indeed any markings or identifying tags that would let us know what it was at day one or indeed later.
So what do we know. We are more or less certain that it was a Type 51 Cooper when new, which of course would date it around 1959, and the rear and centre body sections are definitely original and the front section is also believed to be original. It has some Type 53 bits on it, which of course would be natural as it has been worked on and upgraded in period, to the front and to the rear and it would seem to probably have received some front end damage at some point as the two very front members of the chassis are parallel rather than converging. There are two letters in the file of history. One letter is effectively a receipt for the purchase of it on the 16th August 1967 by the late Mr. K. Mackie (the car is entered into the auction by his brother) at a price of £495. It was sold by the estate agency firm of F.S. Gardiner & Co of College Street, Burnham-on-Sea but there is no indication whether this was as a principal or as an agent for an undisclosed client. It was though by then already fitted with its V8 Chevrolet engine and the other shows what an enthusiast he Mr. Mackie was as it is from Sunbeam-Talbot Ltd as he once owned TWK 2 - the Mille Miglia car.
The car is in beautiful unmolested 'barn-discovered' condition. It is missing the instruments but in all other senses would seem to be 'all there' including the superb and seemingly rare set of Weber carbs all individually numbered as follows: 46DCF3 276; 46DCF3 46; 46DCF3 72; 46DCF3 45 and the Ersa gearbox.
So whose was it?
We have no idea where it started life or as what but certainly it could have been a Grand Prix car. There has been a worldwide forum going on via the website and we do know that the knowledge is out there. There were some 8 or 9 cars with V8 power after Chris Summers started the ball rolling with John Harper as his right hand man, and most of those are still 'missing', so it is difficult to be certain which one this is. However we are showing two photographs of what we are certain is this car and they were taken at the B'ness Hillclimb in Scotland - but who is driving?
There is an opinion, but that is all it is, opinion and not fact, that it could have been David Hepworth. A period racer who completed in all the B'ness events from 1960 until its demise says: "Chevy's or Daimlers were run by John Mackin, Geo Keylock, Peter Westbury in his early days, David Harrison, and Hepworth and the photo's are from the early part of the period of big engines in Formula cars. Geoff Gartside came on the scene a little later having taken part in Formula 3 and Westbury's Cooper had his Daimler engine. Last year I took the two photos in question to Shelsley with me and had a consultation with Tony Marsh and Roy Lane, two contemporaries from those days, and the conclusion was David Hepworth."
David Hepworth was running his Healey with a Chevy engine at the time so was well versed in the technology and indeed could have put that engine in the Cooper and he would probably have wanted a 'car needing work' for that project so this one would have been ideal.
We therefore have to say that we do not know the answer so the choice is yours. It must be a real car, no-one would fake one this well, and anyway we know exactly where it has been since 1967. The finding out which car it was could be even more fun than the rebuild and the racing afterwards.
Good hunting.
 

All successful bids must be paid in full by midday the day after the auction at the latest.

You can collect your new pride and joy from our venue until 1pm the day following the sale or our partners are on hand to help arrange safe transportation:

               

Auction: Syon House, 24th May, 2006

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