1953 Cooper Bristol Mk2

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

The book 'Great Racing cars of the Donington Collection says this about the car:

The Cooper-Bristol

Front-engined Formula 2

 

Easter Monday, 1952, was an electrifying day for British racing enthusiasts. It was the day on which a new Formula 2 car and a new young driver burst into the headlines. The car was the Cooper-Bristol, and the driver was twenty-three-year-old Mike Hawthorn.

Three of these brand-new cars had appeared at Goodwood, and had won three of the day’s main events. Hawthorn won two, Alan Brown the third, and then the blonde young ‘Farnham Flyer’ was second to Gonzales’ fearsome 4½-litre Ferrari in the last event of the meeting.

For the rest of the 1952 season Hawthorn went from strength to strength. Headline-writers discovered he was known as ‘Mike’, not ‘Mick’, and his Cooper-Bristol season earned him a French Grand Prix-winning works Ferrari drive for 1953.

Charles and John Cooper had taken the BMW-based sports Bristol engine and gearbox, mounted it in a box-section, transverse rear spring, independently-suspended chassis, and had produced a light, easy to drive and manoeuvrable Formula 2 car. Design was based on knowledge gained from their mid-engined F3 cars, but the proprietary engine and gearbox made a front-engined layout more practical for the 2-litre class.

For 1953, a Mark 2 tubular-chassised version was developed, which proved very popular with such private entrants as Ken Wharton, Alan Brown and Écurie Écosse – for whom Jimmy Stewart, Jackie’s elder brother, drove at times. The Cooper-Bristols could never challenge the Italians on equal terms, but they have a vital place in the story of Britain’s rise to Grand Prix dominance.

Later in the book there's this note about the exhibit:

Cooper-Bristol Mark 2

Chassis ‘OBMK 2/9/53’ – Collection property – believed to be the car taken to Australia by Reg Hunt, later owned and raced by Len Lukey of ‘Lukey Muffler’ exhaust fame. To Eddie Clay, fitted Holden engine when the Bristol burst. Believed sold to Peter Menere. A Collection rebuild.

The Cooper Bristol Mk2 was later renamed as the Cooper Bristol T23.