The car in which Sir Jack Brabham made his F1 debut and won the 1955 Australian Grand Prix is up for sale.
The 1955 Cooper-Bristol T40 was the first F1 car Brabham raced and was the first rear-engine car to compete in the world championship.
Brabham drove the car in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, qualifying last on the grid, 27 seconds slower than pole-sitter Stirling Moss.
The Australian ran last for much of the race before he retired after 30 laps when the Bristol engine overheated.
That followed Brabham being pushed off the line by mechanics at the race start because of a damaged clutch – and the fact first gear was removed so the gearbox fit in the T40.
It was the car’s only world championship appearance.
However, Brabham campaigned the car in other events, including a non-championship outing at Snetterton where he battled Moss.
The 25-lap encounter featured 15 starters and was won by Harry Schell in a Vanwall, with Moss third in a Maserati 250F and Brabham fourth.
“Behind, was a great battle between Moss’ overgeared Maserati and the amazingly driven Cooper 40-Bristol of Jack Brabham,” wrote Brian Harvey in Formula One: The Real Score?
“The car was based on the 1100cc Cooper ‘Bobtail’ centre-seat sports car, with a two-litre engine.
“They swapped places frequently until Brabham lost it with four laps to go, but he recovered to finish fourth.
“This convinced him that his future was in Europe and, thankfully, he returned the following year to mould a very great career.”
Brabham himself wrote of the race in his autobiography, When the Flag Drops.
“The specialised press spoke of a battle of champions, and it was certainly an important step in my career,” he wrote.
“Without that race, I would definitely have gone back to Australia…The car behaved wonderfully.”
Brabham also competed in the T40 in the 1955 Australian Grand Prix, winning the event on a tight circuit at Port Wakefield ahead of Reg Hunt and Doug Whiteford.
The car entered private ownership in 1956 and was returned to Europe before being purchased by Thomas Bscher (for a time the president of Bugatti) in the 1990s.
It’s since been sold again and has appeared at the Spa Summer Classic in 2009, the Monaco Historic Grand Prix on multiple occasions, as well as the Goodwood Revival.
The car is up for sale by Sotheby’s, with an asking price of $412,000 (€350,000).
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