First rear-engined F1-car?

[Kjut]

Just wondering what car was the first in F1 to have the engine in the back, and what year? Can anyone tell me?

[Asp]

As far as I can remember it was one of the Lotus' in c.'63.

I'll get back to you with the actual details later or tommorrow - but I do know, somewhere!

[zealot]

First of all, welcome to both you. Second of all, well, I guess I don't the answer, so, again, welcome to you both!

[Kjut]

Thanks both of you, and Asp: I hope you can get it out of your head without to much damage (looks painful!)

[Nicholas]

Welcome to the forums Kjut

[paulzinho]

I thought it was a Cooper, or were they the last front engined car?

[Arneal]

Indeed it was Charles and John Cooper that ran the first rear engined cars in F1. They used motor cycle engines with chain drives which made it natural to put the engine in back near the driven wheels.

Stirling Moss won the 1958 Argentinian GP and Jack Brabham won the championship in 1959 and 1960. Eventually everyone, even Ferrari, had to accept the advantages of lower weight, smaller frontal area and more responsive handling, and change their own designs to match the Cooper.

[Rob29]

Depends how you define F1 car.First rear engined GP car was the 1934 Auto Union.Also I seen to recall a modified F3 Cooper ran in 1950 Monaco GP.

[Ray Bell]

I couldn't say without checking, but these are facts:

Jack Brabham drove a 2-litre streamlined Cooper in the 1955 British GP (Bristol engine) with the engine in the rear.

The Bugatti entry for the 1956 French GP was rear engined.

Various Coopers ran in GPs from that time onwards, but for a long time they were only F2 cars and as such couldn't be considered F1 cars. Once they enlarged the engine over 1.5 litres they were F1 cars, however, this would have been during 1957 (I think).

The Cooper 1000 or 1100 that ran in 1950 (and probably 1951) was an F2 car by that same form of reasoning.

Lotus first entered rear engined cars in 1960, BRM also. Ferrari went to rear engined F1 cars in 1961, but I think there may have been a lone rear engined entry in 1960...

Through all of this, I seem to think I've forgotten something...

[EERO]

Ray,
From what I have gleaned from my texts,I think you are right on the money. Trintignant drove only one race in the Bugatti, but I still think that makes it the "First" mid-engined Formula One car, designed as such. Though Brabham's Cooper-Bristol at Aintree ran a 2 liter engine, it still was an F2 chassis and down 500 cc on the remainder of the field.


Of course no one has brought up the Pre-War Grand Prix cars from Auto Union. Not Formula One, but darned impressive.

[Kjut]

Originally posted by EERO
Of course no one has brought up the Pre-War Grand Prix cars from Auto Union. Not Formula One, but darned impressive.

And dangerous...

[Asp]

I've got it!!!

Oh, so's everyone else

[Marshal]

I think the first "Grand Prix" car to be rear engined was the Benz Tropflewagon of 1923. As for the first to comply with a set of regulations called "F1" I'm sure a few people ran F3 Coopers with bigger supercharged engines in F1 events in 1950/51, but they might not have been world championship events.

[Vitesse]

The first rear-engined car to run in a World Championship event was indeed a Cooper - a T12, with 1100cc JAP engine, run by Harry Schell in the 1950 Monaco GP. It was involved in the first lap accident and retired.

Three Cooper-JAPs (another T12 and two T9s) ran in the 1950 Jersey Road Race.

Of course, you can't really call them F1 cars ... as Marshal says, they complied with the regulations, but they weren't built for F1.

Incidentally Marshal, that's Tropfenwagen - they only raced once in a GP, at Monza in 1923.

However, the first post-war rear-engined GP car should have been the Cisitalia D360, designed by Ferdinand Porsche (who designed the first Auto Union) - unfortunately the money ran out and it competed just once: in Argentina as the Autoar.

[Marshal]

I never did do German but I know it meant the "Teardropcar", so is that the first rear engined grand prix car? And the Cooper T12 is the first rear engined car to race in an F1 GP. I'd forgotten about the Cisitalia though, which is linked to the Tropfenwagon as that was alos a Porsche designed car I think. Or was it just the inspiration for the Auto Unions?

[Vitesse]

No, the Benz wasn't designed by Porsche, who was working for Austro-Daimler at the time. Tropfenwagen does indeed mean teardropcar, but the correct name of the Benz is the much more prosaic "RH". The original Tropfenwagen was a saloon built by Rumpler, another German manufacturer, and the RH was given the name too.

Several of the Benz team who worked on the RH later joined the Porsche Bureau and/or Auto Union, so there is a direct link between the two.

[Marshal]

Ta

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Marshal
....I'm sure a few people ran F3 Coopers with bigger supercharged engines in F1 events in 1950/51....

Had they in fact been supercharged, they would have to be called F1 cars. But these cars were so light that 1000cc or 1100cc of JAP V-twin was enough to get them plenty mobile.

Their downfall, in the main, was the destructive nature of vibrations of the air-cooled engines. In Australia in 1951 there was such a car that was running away with the Grand Prix handsomely till it had a carburettor float sink... one of the silly things that just keeps happening in high vibration situations.

Cooper owners persisted in trying to get a foothold in Australian racing for a couple more years, but the killer vibrations prevented them becoming a force and they gave best to the coming flood of 2.5-litre F1 cars that started to arrive... Coopers got their revenge with a few Bristol-powered cars doing some good, and of course, Jack Brabham's 1955 Aintree car actually winning the AGP in that same year at Port Wakefield. I think it was about the only race the car every finished.

It would be another five years before a rear engined car won the race again.