Cooper T70 car-by-car histories

Bruce McLaren in the Cooper T70 at Warwick Farm in February 1964. Copyright John Ellacott 2020. Used with permission.

The two Cooper T70s were the first cars operated by Bruce McLaren’s private team. Bruce won the 1964 Tasman series in his T70.

After his success in 1962-63 with the Atkins-built Cooper T62, Bruce McLaren wanted to build a pair of new lightweight cars for the new 1964 Tasman series and to run as official Cooper works entries. Charles Cooper blocked the idea, wanting McLaren to use the heavier F1 cars, so McLaren formed his own team, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd, and ran independently. The two new Cooper T70s were derived from the 1963 F1 Cooper T66 but slimmer and lighter. The chassis frames were fabricated by Terry Kitson and had stressed-skin steel panelling around the centre of the frame to improve stiffening. They were built up by McLaren's mechanic Wally Wilmott at the Cooper factory. Climax 2.5-litre 4-cylinder FPF engines were fitted, but these were built with the bore of the 2.7-litre engines and a new short-stroke crankshaft. Timmy Mayer would drive the second car, and Wilmott led the mechanics as chief mechanic Harry Pearce was unable to travel out.

After being defeated by Denny Hulme in a Brabham BT4 at Levin, McLaren won the other three New Zealand races: the Grand Prix at Pukekohe, at Wigram and at Teretonga. Jack Brabham joined the series for the Australian races and his Brabham BT7A proved superior, but McLaren had scored enough points in New Zealand to win the first Tasman championship. The series ended in tragedy for the new team when Mayer crashed in practice at Longford. The Cooper hit a tree and Mayer was killed.

McLaren’s team built a new Cooper T79 for 1965 and the remaining T70 was updated for Phil Hill to drive. Immediately after that series, it was sold to Bill Patterson for John McDonald to drive in the 1965 Australian Gold Star, the 1966 Tasman series and the 1966 Gold Star. Don O’Sullivan then bought it and raced it in Western Australia.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to John Blanden, Bryan Miller, David McKinney and Doug Nye for their help when I was first researching these cars in the 1980s and 1990s. John sadly died in 2004 and David in 2014. The movements of the surviving car come from John's book 'Historic Racing Cars in Australia' (Turton & Armstrong, 2004), published just after his death. Thanks also to Jamie Gard, Flavio Puccinelli, Brian Speake and Mark Bisset for more recent assistance.

If you can add to our understanding of these cars, or have photographs that we can use, please email Allen at allen@oldracingcars.com.

These histories last updated on 01 Mar 2024.