1956 Cooper T39

This was one of the competitors in the HGPCA Race for pre 1959 Drum Brake Sports Cars at the Silverstone Historic Tribute meeting in June 2004. 

It's a 1956 Cooper T39 of George Cooper (no relation as far as I know), more commonly known as the Cooper Bobtail because of the truncated tail of the car which was aerodynamically effective, but which John Cooper claimed to have been shortened so that it would fit inside the works transporter. The car was used in the 1,100cc and 1,500cc classes of sportscar racing and this car has a 4-cylinder inline 1,450cc Coventry Climax engine. It was reputedly the road-holding characteristics of this car that led John Cooper to produce first the rear-engined 1½ litre Formula 2 car and then the 2½ litre Formula 1 car that gave Jack Brabham the World Drivers' Championship in 1959 and 1960. Cooper's successes led all the other teams to adopt the rear-engine layout, and the last Formula 1 Grand Prix to be won by a front-engined car was Ferrari's victory in the 1960 Italian Grand Prix.

1971 McLaren M19A

This car took part in the HSCC Seldon Pre '71 Single Seater Championship race at the Historic Sports Car Club's Spring Historic Race Meeting at Oulton Park in May 1986.

It's the Otford Group's 1971 McLaren M19A, and was driven in the race by James Wallis. The car was designed by Ralph Bellamy with a 2,993cc V8 Ford Cosworth DFV engine and was campaigned by the McLaren team in the 1971 and the first three races of the 1972 season. In the 1971 season the car was plagued with reliability problems and finished in sixth place in the World Constructors' Championship with Denny Hulme the most successful driver, finishing in thirteenth place in the World Drivers' Championship with two fourth places, a fifth and a sixth. In 1972 Denny Hulme was again the leading McLaren driver with a second place in Argentina then a win in South Africa in the first two races before driving the McLaren M19C at Monaco and for the rest of that season. He finished in third place in the World Drivers' Championship that season behind Emerson Fittipaldi and Jackie Stewart.

1938 Auto Union D-Type

 I took this photograph of a 1938 Auto Union D-Type at the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It was one of a group of Auto Union racing cars that disappeared after the Second World War when the part of Germany where they had been produced and were stored was occupied by Soviet Russia when the war ended, and all the remaining cars were transported to Russia. It was generally assumed that after the Russians had gleaned what information they could from the cars they had all been destroyed. With the breakdown of the USSR, however, several of these cars came to light and one by one the remains were resuscitated by the engineers at Crosthwaite and Gardiner in Buxted, East Sussex. This is one of those cars and was on display at the Donington Park Museum for a period after its restoration.

The Auto Union D-type had a supercharged 3 litre V12 engine and was driven in 1938 by Hermann Müller, Rudolf Hasse, Christian Kautz, Hans Stuck, Tazio Nuvolari and Ulrich Bigalke and in the curtailed 1939 season by Herman Müller, Tazio Nuvolari. Rudolf Hasse, Georg Meier and Hans Stuck.

Friday's Ferrari

This car took part in the one hour long Italian Historic Car Cup at the Silverstone Classic meeting in July 2010.

It's the 1966 Ferrari Dino 206S of Harry Leventis, chassis #0834 and he shared the driving in the race with Richard Attwood. The car started off in 1965 as a Dino 166S, with a 1,593cc V6 engine, but later that year was fitted with a 1,987cc V6 engine, and that and further alterations gave it the same configuration as the Dino 206S. 

1952 Jowett Jupiter

This was one of the exhibits on the stand of the Jowett Car Club at the Northern Classic Car Show at the G-Mex Centre, Manchester in August 1990.

It's a 1952 Jowett Jupiter, one of around 900 that were produced between 1950 and 1953. The car had a more highly tuned version of the Jowett Javelin's 1,496cc flat-4 engine that produced 60 bhp and was capable of a maximum speed of around 85 mph. The DVLA record says that the car was last re-taxed earlier this year and its colour is now shown as red.

1954/7 Cooper Heyward Special

This was one of the competitors in the Scratch Race for 500cc Cars at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies Meeting at Oulton Park in June 1984.

It's the 1953/7 Cooper Heyward Special of David Docherty and has a 500cc Triumph vertical twin engine. Like so many of the cars that took part in this inexpensive form of racing soon after the Second World War it was largely built by its first owner, Charles Heyward, using parts from older Cooper Mk IV and MkVI cars.

1957 Kurtis KK500G Offenhauser

This car competed in the Ron Flockhart Memorial Trophy Race at the Vintage Sports Car Club's SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2005.

It's the 1957 Kurtis KK500G Offenhauser of Stuart Harper which was shown in the programme of the event as a 4.2 litre Kurtis Indy Roadster. This is the car that Ray Crawford took to the Indianapolis 500 race in 1957 and 1958 as the Meguiar Mirror Glaze Special, but failed both times to qualify for the race. Ray Crawford took part in the Race of Two Worlds round the banked oval at Monza with the car in both 1957 and 1958, one-sided exhibition events that pitted American Indianapolis cars against a motley collection of European cars. The race in both years consisted of three heats with the winner being the best car over the three races. In 1957 Ray Crawford's results in the heats were seventh, fourth and retired, and in 1958 tenth, eighth and fourth.