John Cooper

I was going through a pile of papers when I found the order of service for John Cooper’s funeral. I smiled. I have never found it possible to think of Cooper without smiling. Cooper had that effect on people.

John was the public face of Cooper Cars, because he attended the races; but Cooper Cars was a father/son partnership. Charlie Cooper was an irascible man, a self-taught engineer and sharp in business. When John was 12, Charlie built him a single-seater based on Austin Seven components and John completed a lap of Brooklands before being hauled off. “I was given the biggest rollicking of my life.”