Team · 1950–1969 · United Kingdom
Cooper Car Company
Charles Cooper and his son John started out with small Formula 3 cars that had the engine behind the driver. They carried the same layout over to Formula 1: in January 1958 Stirling Moss won the Argentine Grand Prix in Rob Walker’s privately entered Cooper — the first World Championship win for a rear-engined car.
Jack Brabham was world champion with Cooper in 1959 and 1960, and both times the team won the Constructors’ Championship; in 1959 Bruce McLaren, aged 22, won the United States Grand Prix and became the youngest Grand Prix winner at the time. Soon everyone had moved the engine to the back, and Cooper’s advantage was gone. Its last wins came from John Surtees in Mexico in 1966 and Pedro Rodríguez in South Africa in 1967, and it started a race for the last time at Monaco in 1969.