Chassis Number: CM159
Successor to Cooper’s center-seat “Bobtail,” the Cooper Monaco T49 was named for the win at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix by famed British privateer Rob Walker’s Cooper-Climax Formula 1 car. The Monaco was Cooper’s first production rear-mid-engined sports-racing model, designed expressly to meet FIA requirements of two seats, two doors and a windshield, with a space frame covered by outer panels of lightweight aluminum on a 91-inch-wheelbase platform. The model could accommodate a variety of engines, and indeed, the first eight examples delivered, known as the Mk I cars, were sold as kits for racers to fit with their own powertrains.
The T49 offered here, chassis number CM159, was the first production Cooper Monaco built and features double wishbone and coil-spring front suspension, transverse-leaf-spring rear suspension with lower control arms, rack-and-pinion steering, and four-wheel Girling disc brakes behind Cooper’s cast-magnesium-alloy wheels.
