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Cooper 70th Anniversary at Prescott Hill with John Rhodes & Paddy Hopkirk

Had a great day Saturday at Prescott Hill for the 70th Anniversary of Cooper Car Company. The sun was out for the huge collection of Cooper racing cars from all formulas including Formula Junior, F3, F2, F1 and the old 500’s. Plenty of action on the hill too with most of the 500cc cars running along with a selection of others including a handful of Minis, Cooper’s T23, T39, T43, T59, T82 and a monstrous Cooper Daimler V8. John Rhodes, Paddy Hopkirk and Mike Cooper were present and all on good form. For display we took with us the Jim Russell Cooper MkX and the Mini Cooper S ‘GPH 1C’.

Cooper 70th Anniversary Prescott Hill John Rhodes Paddy Hopkirk Mike Cooper Cooper 70th Anniversary Prescott HillJohn Rhodes Paddy Hopkirk Cooper 70th Anniversary Prescott Hill Jim Russel Cooper 500cc MkX Mini Cooper S GPH1C

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London to Brighton

A good turn out of classics yesterday despite the rain. Shaun and I met plenty of people and made a few of them jump when we fired up John Rhodes Mini. Over 250 cars attended the 24th London to Brighton classic car run.

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John Rhodes on his Mini Cooper driving style

John Rhodes, Mini racing legend, explains his driving style in this short clip from the late 1960’s. The cars were setup for chronic over-steer. By lifting off Rhodes could encourage the rear to slide before mashing the throttle and pulling out of the corner.

“One thing he used to ask for if he was driving one of our cars was that it had to have violent oversteer. We’d use the strongest bumpstops on the back so that as soon as you’d turned into a corner it sat straight on the bumpstops which would put you straight into oversteer which he loved.” – Harry Ratcliffe, British Vita Racing Team

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Goodwood Revival Photos

I’ve just added a page to the site which documents our history at the Goodwood Revival. In the 6 years between 2005 and 2010 we’ve had 3 podium finishes and a best presented team award. For 2012 we will be looking after no less than 4 cars. All photos by Jeff Bloxham.