GTO 65 Solved: Cooper T23-Alfa Romeo

[250gto]

Know what it is? The usual one point reward if you do.

[250gto]

Experts?

[Allan L]

Looks a lot like a Cooper Bristol, but with a different engine.
There were a couple of Alta-engined cars, and John Riseley-Prichard raced a Cooper-Connaught in 1954.
The Alta engine exhausts on the right so it's not one of those, but the 2 litre Connaught has exhausts on the left so that's my guess (as I have no photo to hand).

[250gto]

Ok Allan you're close but not quite there. It is indeed a Cooper F2 car (ie the car often called a Cooper-Bristol) but not Bristol powered. You're also right about it not being Alta powered either. Its not however a Cooper-Connaught. In fact I'm a little confused about your guess. I hadn't heard of a car of that name from that early. I know John Riseley-Prichard raced a Connaught in 1954 (and 1955) in F1 races, but that was a normal Lea Francis engined A-Type. I'm also aware of a later car called a Cooper-Connaught built by Paul Emery in 1959. This was quite different however and was a Cooper T45 fitted an ex-Connaught Alta engine. Is there therefore another car by that name I'm not aware of? (I know there were a lot of Cooper based specials built during the 50's). 
Since you are half way to the solution I'll let you have the puzzle exclusively for 48 hrs.

[Allan L]

Maybe the Cooper-Connaught was a sports car, not a single-seater.
Can't find any specific reference to another four-cylinder engine being used on a T23. Paul Emery raced one with an Alfa Romeo which may have been a four-cylinder, so that's my next guess!

[250gto]

Yep it is the Alfa Romeo engined car. Pictured in the Lavant cup at Goodwood in 1953. According to my source (Mike Lawrence's "Grand Prix cars 1945-65") it had an Alfa Romeo 1900 engine and was "an unmitigated disaster, slow and ill-handling".
Also you were right about Riseley-Pritchard driving a Cooper-Connaught, I just found a reference to it on the atlas/autosport forum and It was a sports car.
So another point to you...

[Allan L]

Paul Emery had a long history of eccentric choices of engine and chassis layout, none of which seemed to work well.
The Alfa engine would probably have weighed as much as the Bristol but delivered less power (as a staring point it had 115 bhp in TI Super form cf. 125 for the Bristol 100D2 and (I'd guess) the gap widened with tuning and meethanol fuel).
The centre of gravity would have shifted rearwards, as it looks as if the back of the four-cylinder engine was in the normal place, which may have upset the handling as well.

[250gto]

Yeah, Emery was definatly involved in a lot of unique cars from around this time. In fact here's a little teaser you might like. Emery was one of only two people to have done something as a constuctor in this period of motor racing, the other being Enzo Ferrari. What was it?

[Carnut]

Yeah, Emery was definatly involved in a lot of unique cars from around this time. In fact here's a little teaser you might like. Emery was one of only two people to have done something as a constuctor in this period of motor racing, the other being Enzo Ferrari. What was it?

The Emeryson cars?

[250gto]

Emeryson was the name of the cars Emery built yes. Perhaps what I should have said was what did Emeryson and Ferrari do as racing car constuctors that no other company did. (Its nothing to do with any exact technical detail on the cars - more of a historical fact). It wasn't something that had occured to me until I first read it and I just wondered if this was something a lot of people realised or not.

[Carnut]

Emeryson was the name of the cars Emery built yes. Perhaps what I should have said was what did Emeryson and Ferrari do as racing car constuctors that no other company did. (Its nothing to do with any exact technical detail on the cars - more of a historical fact). It wasn't something that had occured to me until I first read it and I just wondered if this was something a lot of people realised or not.

They were the only 2 constructors who built cars to run in the first 4 World Championship formulae from 1950 to 1965!

[250gto]

Yep thats exactly it. (In fact you could argueably extend it to include the 3.0 litre formula if you take into account Emerys involvement in the Shannon SH1 of 1966, not sure I'd count it tho). I thought that was quite suprising when I first found that out...

[D-type]

Emeryson was the name of the cars Emery built yes. Perhaps what I should have said was what did Emeryson and Ferrari do as racing car constuctors that no other company did. (Its nothing to do with any exact technical detail on the cars - more of a historical fact). It wasn't something that had occured to me until I first read it and I just wondered if this was something a lot of people realised or not.

They were the only 2 constructors who built cars to run in the first 4 World Championship formulae from 1950 to 1965!

Being pedantic, you could possibly add Cooper to the list.  Harry Schell raced an 1100cc Cooper-JAP in the 1950 Monaco GP.  There wasn't a separate F2 class tha year so the little Cooper was technically a Formula 1 car.  So Coopers ran in the first four formulae.  But as Cooper did not build the car with the intention of running in Grands Prix/ Formula 1 races perhaps it doesn't count.

I can never make up my mind whether to class Paul Emery as a compulsive special builder or as a talented amateur using his ingenuity to overcome a lack of cash. 

[Carnut]

Emeryson was the name of the cars Emery built yes. Perhaps what I should have said was what did Emeryson and Ferrari do as racing car constuctors that no other company did. (Its nothing to do with any exact technical detail on the cars - more of a historical fact). It wasn't something that had occured to me until I first read it and I just wondered if this was something a lot of people realised or not.

They were the only 2 constructors who built cars to run in the first 4 World Championship formulae from 1950 to 1965!

Being pedantic, you could possibly add Cooper to the list.  Harry Schell raced an 1100cc Cooper-JAP in the 1950 Monaco GP.  There wasn't a separate F2 class tha year so the little Cooper was technically a Formula 1 car.  So Coopers ran in the first four formulae.  But as Cooper did not build the car with the intention of running in Grands Prix/ Formula 1 races perhaps it doesn't count.

I can never make up my mind whether to class Paul Emery as a compulsive special builder or as a talented amateur using his ingenuity to overcome a lack of cash. 

Both!

[250gto]

No I really don't think you can count Cooper, since the exact fact is that Ferrari and Emery were the only two constructors to build cars for the first 4 world championship formula. As you said the T12 used in Monaco wasn't built for 4.5-litre/1.5 litre supercharged formula racing nor was any other Cooper. In fact I think (but I'm not sure) that Schell only used the Cooper in Monaco because he couldn't use the car he had intened to race (a Lago-Talbot possibly?). This would explain why he started from last on the grid without having set a practice time.
  As for Emery I know it has been said that one of his problems was that he was a good designer with great ideas but that he had no-one to balance him out on the business/accounts side of things in order to be truely successful. Therefore he stayed more as a special builder/amateur constructor where as Colin Chapman (who did have someone to help handle the business side) moved upwards as a constructor.