Mini John Cooper Works goes back to the original Cooper works

It’s drizzling as I roll into the south-west London suburb of Surbiton, and every so often the automatic wipers on the Mini John Cooper Works I'm driving spring into life to sweep drops of water from the screen. It’s early, and the town is barely awake yet. But even as the pavements start to fill with Suburbiton commuters bustling between newsagents, big-chain coffee shops, and railway station, one part of the town remains empty and ignored. Yet that’s the place I’ve come here to see.

The new generation Mini JCW is named after the man whose vision and no-nonsense organisation created the Cooper racing cars that changed the face of Formula 1 motor racing in the 1950s, and the Mini Coopers that livened up 1960s circuit racing and rallying. So I’ve come to Surbiton—where the Cooper Car Company was based—to find the building that was the original works. From there I’ll head off in search of the greatest of the JCW’s distant ancestors.

First, to find the place where it all started. The Mini’s infotainment controller is on the console between the front seats, where the big rotary control is easy to reach and operate. Navigating the main mode buttons nearby is less easy; until you memorise the position of each one, you have to look down to choose between media, radio, phone, and nav. All set, the Mini navigates me precisely through the thick Surbiton traffic to the junction of Hollyfield Road and Ewell Road where the Cooper works stands. And it’s a bit of a disappointment.

A small history of Mini

By the standards of palatial modern F1 team technology centres, the Cooper operation was modest. Charles Cooper, the man who started it all, was a racing mechanic between the wars and built his young son John a kart powered by a 175cc two-stroke Villiers engine, in which he would terrorise milkmen before the rest of Surbiton was awake.

After the Second World War the Coopers ran a car sales and service garage, and put together their first purpose-built racer in five weeks during 1946, starting from a sketch chalked on the shop floor. It used Fiat Topolino front suspension at both ends, giving independent springing all round via wishbones and transverse leaf springs. The driver sat upfront, with the engine—a race-tuned V-twin from motorcycle engine makers JAP—at the back, driving through a bike gearbox and chain to the rear wheels.

After John Cooper campaigned the car in sprints and hillclimbs with some success, customers beat a path to Surbiton for replicas, and the Cooper Car Company was founded. Coopers quickly became the dominant cars in the new 500cc Formula 3, and Surbiton turned out around 300 of them.

So successful was the new company that the old workshop was replaced by a purpose-built new factory on the same site in 1958. Designed by Richard Maddock, the architect father of Cooper’s chief engineer Owen, it featured a distinctive curved frontage and a drawing office located in a penthouse, where it could get the best natural light. It was here that Maddock, Cooper, and their technically-minded driver Jack Brabham concocted the rear-engined Cooper F1 cars that would be the best in the field in 1959 and 1960, and win Brabham the driver’s championship in both years.

Around the same time, John Cooper had realised that the new Mini small car designed by Alec Issigonis for the British Motor Corporation had stiff monocoque construction, light weight, a low centre of gravity, and a wheel-at-each-corner design that made it ideal for a pocket performance car; all it needed was more power. Cooper’s Formula Junior single-seaters already provided the answer, as they were powered by hot versions of the BMC A-series engine that sat sideways under the Mini’s dumpy bonnet. At Surbiton, Cooper installed a tuned A-series engine into a Mini, and then convinced BMC boss George Harriman to put it into production in 1961.

The Cooper Car Company didn’t stay in Surbiton for much longer. John Cooper sold the company after his father’s death in 1964, and it moved to new premises the following year. The workshop became a garage for the Metropolitan Police traffic division but today it’s empty and down-at-heel, for-sale signs adorning the walls as it waits for a buyer. The petrol pumps have gone, padlocked chains bar entry to the forecourt, and peeling paint adds to the general air of dilapidation.

The hairdresser next door, once Cooper’s car showroom, at least gives a hint of what went on here in the 1950s and 1960s, with a red plaque on the wall attesting to its motorsport heritage. But this historic little corner of Surbiton deserves a better fate than to be forgotten and unloved, as it is now. According to the selling agents a buyer might have been found, but we’ll have to wait and see.

As the rain comes down again and makes the rather miserable scene even more grim, I thumb the JCW’s bright red starter switch and head off in search of more tangible evidence of its heritage. The next destination sounds like the right place—the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon—and as it’s a couple of hours to the north of Surbiton, the mileage will give me a chance to assess the most powerful Mini yet built.