The first Cooper cars were single-seat 500 cc Formula Three racing cars powered by JAP motorcycle engines, built when postwar material shortages forced ingenuity. The prototypes were constructed in part by joining two old Fiat Topolino front ends together. The crucial design decision — placing the engine behind the driver — was initially a matter of practical convenience for a motorcycle-derived drivetrain, but would prove transformative. The resulting Cooper 500 was immediately successful in hillclimbs and circuit races. Demand from aspiring drivers, including Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Ken Tyrrell and Bernie Ecclestone, created the foundation of a thriving business. Cooper dominated Formula Three, winning 64 of 78 major races between 1951 and 1954, and built up to 300 single- and twin-cylinder cars during the 1940s and 1950s.
A modified Cooper 500 chassis gave the company its first taste of top-level racing when Harry Schell qualified for the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix, marking the first appearance of a rear-engined racer at a Grand Prix since the end of the Second World War. The front-engined Formula Two Cooper Bristol, introduced in 1952, was driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Mike Hawthorn among others. Cooper turned to rear-engined sports cars from 1955, powered by a modified Coventry Climax fire-pump engine; these Bobtails revealed how a lower centre of gravity improved traction and reduced the tendency to spin.
The rear-engined revolution at the highest level gathered pace at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix, when Maurice Trintignant won in a Rob Walker-entered Cooper, stunning the racing world. Stirling Moss had already won the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix in a Walker Cooper, exploiting a no-tyre-change strategy. The 1959 season brought the decisive breakthrough: Jack Brabham and the Cooper works team became the first to win the Formula One World Championship in a rear-engined car, a feat they repeated in 1960. Every Formula One World Champion since 1958 has raced with the engine behind the driver, a legacy directly traceable to Cooper.
The designer behind the Cooper racing cars was Owen Maddock, known in the team as "The Beard" or "Whiskers", whose contribution to the architecture of British racing cars in the 1950s and 1960s was decisive.
Jack Brabham took a championship-winning Cooper T53 to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1960 and then entered the 1961 Indianapolis 500 in a modified version called the T54. Arriving as a curiosity, the car ran as high as third and finished ninth. Within a few years the Indianapolis establishment recognised the writing on the wall, and every winner of that race since Jim Clark's 1965 victory in a rear-engined Lotus has run a mid-engined car.
Once every Formula car manufacturer adopted mid-engined designs, Cooper's advantages were eroded by more sophisticated rivals including Lola, Lotus, BRM and Ferrari. John Cooper was seriously injured in a road accident in 1963, and Charles Cooper died in 1964. John sold the Formula One team to the Chipstead Motor Group in April 1965 and the team moved to a factory at Byfleet. New ownership brought a deal with Maserati for a 3-litre V12 engine, which proved heavy and thirsty. John Surtees won the final race of the 1966 season in Mexico in a Cooper-Maserati, and Pedro Rodriguez won the opening race of 1967 in South Africa, which was Cooper's last Grand Prix victory. For 1968 the team switched to BRM engines but results remained poor, and the company failed to secure sponsorship for a Cosworth-powered car for 1969. Cooper participated in 129 World Championship events over nine years, winning 16 races.
As Cooper's Formula One fortunes declined, its other great contribution to motorsport flourished. The Mini Cooper, introduced in 1961 as a more powerful development of Alec Issigonis's BMC Mini with improved brakes and a distinctive livery, dominated saloon car and rally racing throughout the 1960s, winning the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964, 1965 and 1967. Several Cooper-branded versions and conversion kits have been marketed by various companies since, and the BMW MINI produced from 2001 has continued to carry Cooper and John Cooper Works designations, keeping the name alive in volume production.
John Cooper retired to the Sussex coast after the company's closure and established a garage business at Ferring near Worthing in 1971 specialising in Mini Cooper tuning kits and performance parts. That business was sold to Honda in 1986.