1956 Cooper T39

This car competed in the Louis Vuitton 1950s Sports Car Race at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in August 1996.

It's the 1956 Cooper T39 of Marshall Bailey, 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 1,460cc 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.