Chassis Number: NZ25438
Here the Bonhams Motor Car Department is delighted to offer for sale by auction the Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team’s first sports-racing car. It is back at Goodwood for the first time since it started from pole position here in the immensely popular and universally respected young driver and engineer’s hands, to lead the likes of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Denny Hulme (and set fastest race lap) in the 1964 RAC Tourist Trophy race. This incredibly historic “barn find” Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile is offered after returning to its country of origin following no fewer than 57 years — more than 50 spent in storage — in the U.S.from 1965–66 and in South America from 1967–2022. Most successful racing cars enjoy just the briefest time at the top. Their surviving fabric usually preserves the touch of just one great driver, one great configuration or just one great race. It is rare for any frontline racing car to win consistently for more than one or two years. Yet the Cooper-Zerex-Oldsmobile’s story saw it as an entity being continually adapted to match developing race regulations over three absolutely jam-packed racing seasons. And during that time it won at premier level in each of its sports car guises from 1962–64. During those years, this wonderfully historic racing car truly became “The Great Transformer.”
