Tim Schofield
Head of UK Business Development, Motoring
LOT 390
1961-64 Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile 'Transformer' Sports-Racing Two-Seater Chassis no. NZ 25438 (see text)
Sold for £911,000 inc. premium
Lot 390
The ex-Bruce McLaren1964 3.9-Litre Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile
Goodwood Revival: Collectors' Motor Cars and Automobilia|17 September 2022, 13:00 BST|Chichester, Goodwood
1961-64 Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile 'Transformer' Sports-Racing Two-Seater
Chassis no. NZ 25438 (see text)
Chassis no. NZ 25438 (see text)
• From 1961 Formula 1 Cooper-Climax Single-Seater To Roger Penske's 1962 Zerex
Special Centre-Seater
• From 1962 Zerex Special Centre-Seater to Roger Penske's 1963 Offset-Drive Zerex Special
• From Roger Penske's 1963 Offset-Drive Zerex Special to Bruce McLaren's 1964
Cooper-Zerex Special
• From Bruce McLaren's 1964 Cooper-Zerex Special to his 1964 Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile
• Bruce McLaren's 1964 Aintree, Silverstone, Mosport Park Players '200' and August Monday Brands Hatch Guards Trophy-winner
Footnotes
Here the BONHAMS motor car department is delighted to offer for sale by auction the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team's first sports-racing car – back at Goodwood for the first time since it started from pole position here in the immensely popular and universally respected young driver/engineer's hands, to lead the likes of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Denny Hulme (and set fastest race lap) in the 1964 RAC Tourist Trophy race.
This incredibly historic 'barn find' Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile is offered after returning to its country of origin following no fewer than 57 years – more than 50 spent in storage - in the USA 1965-66 and in South America, 1967-2022.
The great New Zealand-born Grand Prix- and Le Mans-winning driver/constructor Bruce McLaren absolutely shone behind the wheel of this 1964 Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile, but this extraordinary competition car truly enjoyed unique fame within racing history even before his tenure.
Most successful racing cars enjoy just the briefest time at the top. Their surviving fabric usually preserves the touch of just one great driver, one great configuration, or just one great race.
It is rare for any frontline racing car to win consistently for more than one or two years. Yet the Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile's story saw it as an entity being continually adapted to match developing race regulations over three absolutely jam-packed racing seasons. And during them it won at premier level in each of its sports car guises 1962-64. During those years, this wonderfully historic racing car truly became 'The Great Transformer'.
Its stature even extends beyond its being the taproot of the entire modern McLaren marque. For discerning 1960s racing-car hunters it has become something of a holy grail, having achieved tremendous premier level success and fame in the hands of some truly great racing names...
In progressively-developing form it was driven by such illustrious stars as the Americans Walt Hansgen and Roger Penske, before being acquired by the Coopor Car Company's premier-league Formula 1 team leader Bruce McLaren for his embryo new private racing team. During the period 1961-1964 this Cooper-Zerex – powered initially by British-built 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engines, then converted by Bruce McLaren's personal mechanics to accommodate what was then regarded as 'a big' American alloy-block Oldsmobile V8 – secured its now legendary status.
The car first achieved immense success in the hands of American racing and entrepreneurial business star Roger Penske – still, at the age of 85, head of his often-dominant racing organisation today while his Penske Corporation manages businesses with consolidated revenues exceeding $32-billion, operating in over 3,200 locations and employing more than 56,000 people worldwide.
With Roger Penske driving, the developing 'Zerex Special' which formed two of this 'Great Transformer' car's earliest iterations won both the 1962 'Los Angeles Times' Grand Prix at Riverside Raceway and the Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca followed by the year's Puerto Rican Grand Prix at Caguas. In modified form further success followed in 1963 as Roger Penske won both the Sports Car Club of America races at Marlboro and Cumberland, plus the major international Guards Trophy event at Brands Hatch, England.
Bruce McLaren then acquired the car for 1964. Using a 2.7-litre 4-cylinder Climax engine, he won with it in the British international sports car races at Aintree and Silverstone, before having the car converted to use an initially 3.5-litre Traco-modified Oldsmobile V8 engine. Upon completion this freshly-modified Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile was hastily finished in the only paint the team could find available on an English Sunday; garden-gate green. And the little team promptly nicknamed their new contender 'The Jolly Green Giant'.
It was hastily shipped to Mosport Park, Toronto, Canada, where Bruce McLaren immediately won the international Player's '200' race upon this debut for his Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile with its signature temporary-expedient 'stack pipe' exhausts sprouting high above its rear deck. A fourth, even more illustrious, race win followed for Bruce McLaren and his now green-and-white liveried, tail-piped V8 projectile in the international Guards Trophy race at Brands Hatch on August Bank Holiday Monday, 1964 – the core car's second consecutive Guards Trophy victory after Roger Penske's win the previous year.
The Cooper-Zerex 'Transformer' as now offered here would in essence, during no fewer than eight years' active service, run in no fewer than seven distinct configurations, as follows:
Iteration 1 - 1961 form as a brand-new Formula 1 Cooper-Climax T53P, with 1½-litre four-cylinder FPF engine. Painted Briggs Cunningham white and blue it was crashed by Walt Hansgen in that year's United States GP.
Iteration 2 - Its 1962 rebuilt form saw it converted for 1962's major professional West Coast sports-car races. Buyer Roger Penske had it configured with a 2.7-litre four-cylinder 'Indy' Climax FPF engine, distinctive wheel-enveloping bodywork/centre-seated cockpit, and a tiny sports-car-legalising 'passenger seat' within its left-side pontoon. This red-liveried 'Zerex Special', entered by Penske's Updraft Enterprises Inc, promptly won the lucrative professional sports car races at Riverside, Laguna Seca and Caguas.
Iteration 3 – The car was then modified to meet new 1963 rules requiring matching equal-sized seats both sides of the car's longitudinal centreline, the 'Zerex Special' re-emerging with the same 2.7-litre Coventry Climax FPF 4-cylinder engine in a much-modified and rebodied right-hand drive chassis retaining only the F1 Cooper suspension-mounting end frames. John Mecom Racing Team-liveried in metallic mid-blue and white, it was driven by Penske to several wins, including the UK's international Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch.
Iteration 4 - Early-1964 after sale to Bruce McLaren; still 2.7 Climax FPF-engined but now UK-legal Cooper-Zerex-Climax repainted green with silver stripe. Entered by the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team, driven by Bruce to score two significant wins, at Aintree and Silverstone April/May '64.
Iteration 5 - Rebuilt by June 1964; 3.5-litre Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile V8 (all-new McLaren straight-tube chassis centre-section re-using original F1 Cooper end frames). Green with silver stripe, BMcLMRT entry driven by Bruce to win the major Player's '200', Mosport Park, Canada.
Iteration 6 – August/September 1964, 3.9- litre Oldsmobile V8, top-ducted radiator,
repainted green with white stripe. BMcLMRT entry again driven by Bruce to win the Guards Trophy, Brands Hatch, then star in Goodwood's TT.
Iteration 7 - Final form – 1965-66, bought by Texan amateur Dave Morgan, fitted with distinctive 'anteater' nose body – repainted red – otherwise retaining the McLaren straight-tube centre-section chassis with its F1 Cooper extremities. It was raced in SCCA South-Western Region events and in the Bahamas Speed Weeks.
In 1967 Dave Morgan sold the car to a Venezuelan amateur racer in South America, whence it has only now re-emerged.
The car's remarkable career had seen it initially constructed in 1961 as a 1½-litre Formula 1 Cooper-Climax, chassis serial number 'F1-16-61'. That serial fell into the Cooper Car Company's contemporary 'Lowline' Type 53P customer-production series, but the car really emerged as a very near sister of that year's more compact T55 works team Formula 1 cars. They had been specially built for that first season of 1½-litre Formula 1 racing, the Grand Prix capacity limit having just been changed from the 2 ½-litre regulations under which the preceding Type 53 had been originated in 1960 – when the 'Lowline' Cooper-Climax T53 works cars had dominated the year's Formula 1 World Championship.
Cooper-Climax 'F1-16-61' was a slender Formula 1 racing single-seater, of course with centreline driving position and open wheels, entered by the renowned Briggs Cunningham team for lead driver Walt Hansgen in that year's United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
After being crashed there, the car was bought and repaired by aspiring young American driver/entrepreneur Roger Penske. While he raced a sister true Type 53P in open-wheeler Formula 1/InterContinental early in 1962, he had the ex-Cunningham car converted to carry enveloping sports car bodywork while retaining its central driving position. It was in this lightweight form – the car liveried in bright red and named the 'Zerex Special' after its DuPont chemical brand sponsor - that he ambushed the more bulky, heavier and less nimble sports car opposition to dominate that year's great American west coast professional series races of October 1962.
Under intense pressure from the Penske 'Zerex's main rivals, American racing authority then tightened its sports car regulations for 1963, banning the centre-drive option, but Penske and new car owner John Mecom – to whom he had sold the car - had the 'Zerex Special' rebuilt with a brand-new inserted centre-section frame, and two conventional equal-sized seats, one each side of the car's centreline. With offset driving position and controls, the car won still more.
Into 1964 this already great car gained even more significance in Bruce McLaren's hands, becoming the first sports-racing car to wear his distinctive Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team badge (designed for the young New Zealander by renowned racing artist Michael Turner). After its race wins in Bruce's hands at Aintree, Silverstone and Brands Hatch, plus the Canadian Player's '200', he then used the car to dominate the opening stages of the international RAC Tourist Trophy race at Goodwood, starting from pole position, leading the early stages and setting fastest race lap before the car's clutch failed.
It was after its replacement in September 1964 by Bruce's prototype, entirely McLaren-built, M1 sports car, that this 'Jolly Green Giant'/'Great Transformer' Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile was sold to Texan amateur owner-driver Dave Morgan. He campaigned it in US south-western events and at the annual Bahamas Speed Week into 1966 before selling it to Venezuelan racer Leopoldo 'Leo' Barbosa of Maracaibo. Barbosa contested local events with the car into 1968 and possibly later. It was finally sold to race organiser and car dealer Guillermo 'El Mono' Montero who co- owned Maracaibo's Autodromo Internacional La Chinita.
Montero kept it for some years before finding an enthusiastic South American buyer in the current vendor's now-octogenarian father. He ensured that this once-magnificent motor sporting gem has long been preserved in obscurity by the family, stored in dismantled form. It lacks most of its original body panelling apart from its side sills, despite in other respects having survived essentially complete – and upon examination when it first returned to the UK in mid-summer still remarkably original and structurally well-preserved.
Late in 1964, Bruce McLaren's own first-person account of the Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile, was presented by his racing journalist friend and contemporary pioneer team-mate, Eoin Young. Bruce himself:
"THEY all told Hansgen he shouldn't have bent it. Then they told Penske he couldn't straighten it. When we heard what he was doing with it, we told him it wouldn't work. When it did, we said it was illegal, so he changed it. Then it was superseded, so he sold it. We bought it. The RAC told us It wasn't right, so we changed it.
"They all told us an American engine would spoil it. but we changed it anyway. Call it what you like—ex-GP car, FUBAR, Zerex. Cooper-Oldsmobile—the record is there to say that this extraordinary set of suspension arms, steering column and odd few feet of chassis (for that's all there is left of the original) has won more sports car races and more money than any car in the last decade.
"Briggs Cunningham had no idea what he started in 1961 when he placed an order for a Cooper Fl car identical to the one that Jack Brabham and I were using that season. It was duly completed and shipped with the works cars to Watkins Glen for the US GP. Painted in smart white and blue Cunningham racing colours, it was enteral for Walt Hansgen to drive. Unfortunately in the race Walt got a little involved. 1 forget the details now, but the car went base over apex at a fair rate of knots and ended up in a pretty sorry state.
"Roger Penske was a name that was fast growing in American road-racing circles. He was, and still is, a young man rightly confident of his abilities in many directions, besides those he certainly has behind a steering wheel. Seeing a bargain, he bought the wreck from Cunningham for what I believe was a mere song.
"Although no engineer, Roger knows his way around racing cars and, more important, he knows how to find and pay the right man for the job. In a short space of time, Penske was running the car in Formule Libre races in its original single-seat form.
"It must have been around Sebring time, March, of the next year when he first told a few of us what he intended doing. Sports car racing, particularly the two big races in California in October, was offering some pretty exotic prize money and good racing.
"But the various ruling bodies' ideas of what constituted a sports car were a bit vague, to say the least. Penske got in touch with the race organizers and the rule book group and asked if they would mind if the seat in his sports car was in the middle like some of the earlier Cooper sports can that were still running. and I gather the reaction was 'Hell no, come right along. We love having you!'.
"So Roger hired a top body-builder from Indianapolis for three months, and arrived at Riverside Raceway in the month of October with what was the smallest, lightest, best-looking vehicle for a long time. It had to go—it was simply the F1 chassis with a 2.7-litre "Coventry Climax engine in the back - a proven combination with a very light all-enveloping body clipped on. It was more than 200 lbs, lighter than the factory Cooper Monaco.
"At Riverside, Roger won something like $10,000 plus the latest Pontiac pace car; he won again at Laguna Seca the following weekend, and carried off the laurels yet again at Puerto Rico, collecting a small fortune in prize monies and advertising contracts. Roger was not one to leave the business side unexploited, and the car (had been) quickly christened (among other things) the 'Zerex Special'.
"In the meantime, however, some of Roger's competitors, myself included, were starting to mutter darkly. We weren't mad at Roger, on the contrary, he knew his competitors and knew that no one was going to stop him running his creation. We were upset that the FIA Appendix C rules for sports car racing were being treated so lightly by the Americans.
"One thing was sure. central-seat sports can would not be allowed the following year, so the Cheater, or FUBAR ('Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition') as it had been dubbed, was in for its first major structural change.
"I think this was the first time that Roger didn't do a good job. He had the two top rails of the chassis removed from just behind the front suspension to the rear of the cockpit bay, replacing them with new tubes that curved down and out then back in and up, giving room for two seats where there had previously been one. The tube bends would have delighted a master plumber, but I'm afraid they gave the chassis probably one of the lowest torsional rigidity figures ever!
"But it still won races. and Roger didn't have much trouble in walking off with the 1963 Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch. However, the car then belonged to Texan John Mecom. Penske had sold it, but still drove it, and I guess he took the prize money, only now he didn't have to foot the bills. Roger was learning. He had also picked up one or two other things that weren't as apparent to some of us Europeans as they should have been. One was that the days of the 2.7 litre four-cylinder Coventry Climax engine were numbered in sports car racing, and so he started to concentrate on his latest idea—a Cooper-Chevy. Which is about where we came into the affair.
"I had intended to build, or have built, a light sports car to use the 2 5-litre Climax engines from my Formula Tasman Coopers.
"In fact, I had started work on a prototype. but during our season in New Zealand and Australia, Wally Willmott and Tyler Alexander, my two mechanics, and the Mayer brothers. all of whom had been at the last year's series of sports car races in the States. disagreed violently every time I mentioned 2.7 litres. Four or live litres at the least, otherwise they didn't want to know.
"As it turned out they were right. A good modern sports car with between 200 and 300bhp will lap most English circuits as fast as a 'Big Banger', which was my argument, but getting off the line with full tanks and passing cars like AC Cobras, which would be faster down the straights, needs lots of 'pressure' as Penske or Jim Hall would put it.
"So in March when I arrived back in England with the Australasian bit over for another eight months, I had to decide just what McLaren Motor Racing was going to race in Europe. F2 perhaps, but the BMC-Cooper wasn't ready, so that left only sports cars, and I went to the Easter Goodwood meeting to see how many (Ford V8-powered) Lotus 30s would turn up, and how the (new 5-litre V8) Atkins Cooper-Maserati would fare.
"One thing was apparent after a little investigation—any one of the good American sports cars, the Shelby Cooper King Cobras, one of Hall's Chaparrals, Mecom's Scarab or Penske's Cooper-Chev, could win most of the coming season's scheduled sports car races. The only problem was that none of these was for sale. Mecom said he wanted to sell the Cooper-Zerex but we weren't very keen until he offered an aluminium Oldsmobile V8 in the deal as well.
"We made an arrangement and just two days before the April Oulton Park meeting the car arrived in England. We had problems initially, but by the time we had competed at Aintree and Silverstone we had played with the springing and castor angle and felt that It was going as well as we could expect.
"The day after Silverstone we ran a tape measure once more over the Oldsmobile engine and took a hacksaw to the chassis. cutting out the entire section from just behind the front suspension to just in front of the rear. I left a couple of sketches and a wire model with Wally and Tyler and flew down to Monaco for the Grand Prix. A week or so later I returned to find they had made a very smart-looking job of the chassis, and the Oldsmobile was fitting in quite snugly.
"Due to space and suspension geometry considerations we found ourselves committed to use the Type 21 Colotti gearbox from my Tasman Cooper, already a tired unit but trusty it seemed. After much hard work, which I shall gloss over, the team arrived at Mosport Park in Canada and we were lucky enough to win.
"After Mosport we had time to do a little development, both on the chassis and the engine, before the Guards Trophy. We very much wanted to build a nice new car, as neat, clean and efficient in its design as some of the modern GP cars. To do this, of course, meant a lot of experimenting. and a lot of data collecting regarding spring rates, roll centres, cooling requirements, tyre sizes, and a million other things that we wanted to be sure of before we started building our own car.
"I still wasn't sure about these American engines. Either. At least I wasn't until I saw the Oldsmobile stripped for crack testing and rebuilding. It was perfect. I've never seen a racing engine that looked so sound. Traco Engineering in California had certainly done a good job for us. And that's my sports car saga to date. In one short season we bought a well-used sports car, rebuilt it, raced it, and have incorporated the lessons learned Into a brand new sports car—a McLaren. I hope we manage to build in a little of the development that a lot of cars lack."
It is worth being reminded of just how young the McLaren team really were. In 1964 Bruce was 26, Eoin Young 25, and mechanics Tyler Alexander 24, Wally Willmott and Howden Ganley (the future Formula 1 and World Championship/CanAm sports car driver) 23. To them, nothing seemed impossible.
Bruce again on the Cooper-Zerex, form his regular column in the weekly 'Autosport' magazine: "Our first event was at Oulton Park on April 4, but... it was late on the Wednesday before the car arrived in London... just one day to fit a luggage trunk, lights, a windscreen wiper... to turn it into a British-regulation sports car – a week's work in 24 hours. As a result an oil pipe came loose... The car lasted seven laps before the oil pressure disappeared...
However, the boys had a clear week before Aintree. In practice I scored best sports car time. I managed to hold a comfortable half-minute lead for most of the race (but) if I hope to keep pace with the Lotus 30 and Tommy Atkins's fantastic 450bhp Cooper-Maserati, (we) will have to start tweaking the Cooper-Zerex." At May Silverstone, Bruce then won by 10.2sec from Roy Salvadori's Atkins Cooper-Maserati V8 "while the Lotus 30 had another attack of teething troubles".
The Monaco GP followed, after which he "...headed back to England to help rebuild our sports car and fit an Oldsmobile V8 engine". 'Autosport' separately reported "The rebuilt chassis is smaller, lower and stronger with a stressed steel undertray welded on to increase torsional rigidity."
Meanwhile, Tyler and Wally had tired of continually removing the forward body to check brake and clutch fluid levels. So they cut a small front-hinged hatch above the master cylinders, held shut by a Dzus fastener. The car was flown out to Canada's Player's '200' race at Mosport, Bruce winning both heats and overall despite being blasted and having its windscreen split by stones thrown up by A.J. Foyt's Scarab.
In later testing at Goodwood, the little nose flap popped open and Bruce noticed it lifting in the airstream. The trio realised there must be a low pressure area there. So why not exploit it to suck radiator air upwards through the nose top, instead of conventionally deflecting it sideways? Tyler snipped a U-shape in the body behind the radiator, then folded the flap down as a deflector. Bruce ran with his now top-ducted radiator and bingo – cooling was improved and high-speed understeer reduced. Bruce then won the Guards Trophy race at Brands Hatch before starting from pole position at the Goodwood TT.
And consider just how different the racing world was then. Bruce on the August Monday race at Brands Hatch: "Busy weekend for drivers competing in the German GP on the Sunday, and the Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch on the Monday.
"We practised the Cooper-Olds at Brands on the previous Wednesday and in the wee small hours of Monday morning we were airborne in Jack Brabham's twin-engined Cessna 310, bound for Brands Hatch. There were feet sticking out of car windows and bleary-eyed types wandering around the paddock there...I caught a few minutes kip in the sun before the race call-up.
"I was thrilled with the preparation of the Cooper-Olds. The car looked immaculate with its new green and white coat of paint, and the mechanics rigged up just as smartly in green shirts and white trousers, made sure the car was first away on the warm-up lap.
"The starter seemed to hold the flag up for ever, but when it finally dropped I was away in a cloud of rubber smoke – sideways! I eased hurriedly to keep the machinery pointing in the right direction and bombed through Paddock Bend just ahead of the field" – and he maintained that lead to the end.
Surviving original team member Howden Ganley – racing mechanic-cum-subsequent Formula 1 and major-league World Championship/CanAm sports car driver, then constructor of Tiga competition cars – was present when the travel-crate was opened to welcome this wonderful 'barn find' back to the UK. After typically thoughtful study he confirmed simply: "For me that is certainly the real car".
While the 1961 Formula 1 Cooper-Climax whose front and rear suspension-mounting frames have been so long retained within the car, bore the chassis serial 'F1-16-61', an intriguing discovery is a surviving chassis number, obviously stamped hurriedly into the left-top chassis rail of the 1964-inserted McLaren centre-section, just by its dash-panel junction. It reads, cryptically, 'NZ 25438' – undoubtedly 'New Zealand' then perhaps a significant date – 25 April 1938? That doesn't match the birthdates of any of the major players, but Howden suggests possibly that of a wife or girlfriend. The revamped frame would have required some form of ID when first hurried overseas to Mosport, or perhaps this was stamped speedily for export to Texas when the car was sold to Dave Morgan?
Such really inconsequential mysteries apart, here is an eminently 'do-able' restoration project which if conducted by forensically-capable specialists – perhaps advised by sole surviving 1964 McLaren team member, Howden Ganley – can surely return this 'Great Transformer' to its full contemporary glory. This really is a golden opportunity to revive what could be considered to be motor racing archaeology's 'find of the century' to active life, looking as immaculate perhaps as it did on those long-gone 1964 weekends when it won its second consecutive international Guards Trophy, and when it started from pole position, led and set fastest race lap in that memorable RAC Tourist Trophy right here, at Goodwood.
We absolutely commend this extraordinary survivor to the market.
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