How production giants cemented Britain's racing pedigree

When Gregor Grant published Autosport's first edition on 25 August 1950, the Cooper Car Company had been running for almost four years. Father-and-son Charles and John Cooper had built a few cars in Surbiton before the FIA adopted the 500cc single-seater category as Formula 3. It signalled a boom, and their small army of talented artisan cohorts were ready. More than 400 Cooper 500s would number a third of the company's total output.

Their response pioneered the production racing car industry, cementing Great Britain as its hub, and underpinned a meteoric rise to become F1 world champion constructor within a decade.

When your scribe joined Autosport in July 1977, Van Diemen International Racing Services was into its fifth year. Founded by Ralph Firman and Tasmanian Ross Ambrose, its first cars - FA73 Formula Fords - had rolled out of a cold farm unit on the demobbed Snetterton Heath airfield in Norfolk. The first, Canadian David McCullum's, made its debut in the spring of 1973. When Scot Donald MacLeod switched from a Merlyn Mk11A to the second Van Diemen and won first time out at Snetterton in June, rivals were on high alert.

Two decades previously, rear-engined Cooper 500s aping Auto Union's mighty 'Silver Arrows' of the 1930s ruled the F3 roost, powered by JAP then more powerful Norton engines (occasionally Vincent and Triumph units too). Initially primitive, with simple ladder frames riding on recycled Fiat Topolino suspension, they became more sophisticated and quicker. Such is the pace of evolution.

On tracks, hillclimbs and circuits, Coopers outnumbered their rivals, and every major victory for the next few seasons led to aspiring owners banging on the door of the former Police garage factory. The smell of success was intoxicating. The Surrey enterprise - from a locality that also begat Alta, Connaught, Emeryson and HWM cars - earned the lion's share of the spoils for most of the decade and expanded its product line.

Aimed at increasing grid sizes by making motor racing's pinnacle more accessible, the two-litre world championship regulations of 1952-53 pointed the way forward and gave Cooper a leg-up. While its Bristol straight-six engined T20 and T23 cars were conventionally laid out, Australian arrival Jack Brabham subsequently installed the BMW-designed unit into the tail of an uprated centre-seat T39 'bobtail' sportscar, the T40, and made his world championship debut in it.

In league with canny privateer entrant Rob Walker, of the Johnnie Walker whiskey dynasty, Cooper dipped its toes in the big league by building F2 chassis to take four-cylinder Coventry-Climax engines of increasing capacity. Stirling Moss, who had helped establish the fledgling marque's reputation in the late 1940s, when he won at Goodwood aged 19, was the other key part of the equation. Peter Collins's F3 contemporary had feel like no other.

Moss's magnificently executed 1958 Argentinian GP victory, which left Ferrari and Maserati's finest reeling, was the first points-paying F1 win for Cooper and its engine partner. Moss did the same for Lotus in 1960, again under Walker's patronage.

By then, the Cooper Car Company was well on the way to becoming a double world champion, having crafted the cars in which Brabham earned his maiden drivers' title, with a full 2.5-litre Climax FPF engine powering his T51 to victories in the season-opening Monaco GP and then Great Britain's round to a rapturous reception from the 'home' crowd in 1959. 'Black Jack' duly defended his crown in imperious fashion, winning five GPs on the trot in a 'lowline' T53 chassis.

"We didn't set out to rule the world, just to build a few cars initially. There were something like 38 registered Formula Ford manufacturers already, so nobody thought it would be easy" Ralph Firman

Having crushed allcomers in 500cc F3, before the industry refocused on Italian Count 'Johnny' Lurani's FJunior initiative from 1958, all was not rosy for Cooper in the production car marketplace. When Colin Chapman's Lotus marque - active in grands prix since 1958 - arrived in FJunior in 1960 with a scaled down derivative of its first rear-engined F1/F2 chassis, Cosworth-tuned Ford engines and rising star Jim Clark, the balance of power changed. Allied to BMC, which marketed its 'hotted-up' Mini Cooper and Cooper S saloons, the slide for Cooper's core business had begun. It accelerated when Brabham and Ron Tauranac of Motor Racing Developments entered the fray with their FJ Brabhams.

PLUS: How pragmatic principles made Tauranac a design legend

Brabham, building rapidly towards becoming a double F1 championship-winning manufacturer, and Lotus, churning out hundreds of junior formula cars on the back of Clark's world titles in 1963 and 1965, hastened the old guard's demise. By 1969 Cooper was gone, but even Lotus and Brabham's days as manufacturers of production racing cars were numbered, with the likes of Derek Bennett's Chevron and Roy Thomas's Titan gaining traction and old-stager Eric Broadley - having turned his back on F1 for the first time - offering Lola chassis for a staggering spectrum of categories.

With 1000cc F3 providing sensational racing throughout Europe, but costs rising, Formula Ford's school-inspired birth in 1967 opened a massive global market. More than 250 constructors - from man-in-shed one-offs to dedicated factories producing more than 100 year on year - took up this challenge, with inevitable results. There wasn't room for everybody and many fell in the 1970s and 1980s.

Firman learned much on that 1000cc F3 'screamer' scene. By no means an academic, the streetwise warrior honed his mechanic's craft working on brother-in-law (and triple Autosport National 500cc F3 champion) Jim Russell's Racing Drivers' School cars. They also converted FJuniors to resemble F1 cars for John Frankenheimer's film Grand Prix in much the same way that 50 years later FVauxhall Lotus chassis formed the basis of some F1 stock in Ron Howard's Hunt v Lauda biopic Rush. Firman's preparation skills had been showcased by Brazilian rising stars Emerson Fittipaldi and Carlos Pace with their F3 Lotuses; the die was almost cast.

Having worked briefly at Lotus Components in Cheshunt, Firman had watched the superpower's demise with a degree of sadness. When Colin Chapman's customer racing car division closed at the end of 1971, Firman also spotted an opportunity. In early 1973 he did a deal with legendary fabricator Arch Motors - which had made the Lotus 69 FF frames - to create his own car using the jigs.

What emerged was effectively a round-tubed version using simplified (thus cheaper to produce) suspension, retaining proven wheelbase and track dimensions. While different in detail, the Lotus 69F and Van Diemen FA73's corners are interchangeable. The bodywork, made locally, with its broad chisel nose and side radiators in shrouds adjacent to the drivers' hips, took styling cues from the Lotus 72 in which Fittipaldi had won the previous year's F1 title.

Looks, which made rivals' appear dated, didn't hinder sales. Their lines were rooted in F1 and FJunior 'cigar tubes' of the early 1960s. Van Diemen sold 15 cars in its first model year - by which time Ambrose had long returned to Tassie - increasing to 35 in 1974, when the 'RF' model prefix appeared, and 48 in 1975. A third of the RF75s went to JRRDS's Canadian outpost at Mont Tremblant. But the chassis was long in the tooth. When 1976's final update of a concept originated by David Baldwin for Lotus
was a flop, something shiny and new was called for.

Van Diemen faced far greater depth of opposition at racing's entry level than Cooper had. Its stars had also yet to align, but success wasn't far away. Winning the British Racing & Sports Car Club's British Oxygen Company championship and the second Formula Ford Festival with MacLeod (a feat the quiet Scot would repeat in his own Sark car in 1979) before its first season in 1973 was out focused the attention of potential customers previously enamoured by Crossle, Hawke, Lotus, Merlyn, Royale and Titan cars among offerings from towards a dozen 'mainstream' constructors.

"We didn't set out to rule the world, just to build a few cars initially," says Firman. "There were something like 38 registered Formula Ford manufacturers already, so nobody thought it would be easy. Especially as we were working [under a makeshift poly-tunnel] in a 3000sq ft farm building, half of which was taken up by 70 tons of corn. We sold quite a few cars, but we were in trouble.

"Van Diemen never made things - which is vital in volume production - but assembled cars using components bought in mainly from local contractors. The oil crisis [that September] threatened all racing worldwide and we were committed to 50 car sets. We heard it on the radio during a short break in Devon and had to call every supplier on the Monday morning, pleading with them to delay deliveries by a month. Fortunately by then the situation in the middle east had blown over.

"Later we bought the remains of GRD [another Lotus offshoot, based locally in Griston, which enjoyed a fine 1972 debut with the likes of superstars Roger Williamson and Tony Brise in F3, but fell victim to a fickle marketplace coupled with the PR-driven rise of March in the final year of the 1600cc regulations]. Building up the last cars gave us work. But we struggled through 1976, selling very few Formula Fords. We were pretty much broke."

Teaming up with the genial David Baldwin - who had penned F1 cars for Ensign and Fittipaldi in the interim - was a masterstroke. His rakish RF77 design even had the Ensign's little folds in its aluminium side skins and looked superb. MacLeod was called up to give the prototype its debut at the 1976 Festival - by now at Brands Hatch - a brave ploy in front of players from around the world. But it worked.

"We'd never have sold it had we known that [Elan] would run it down, although it was theirs to do what they wanted with" Ralph Firman

Having won his heat, quarter-final and semi, a spin on a very wet track in the final cost second place. But, as the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and those two days in Kent proved hugely influential. Sales of the RF77 were strong, Chico Serra won the Festival a year later and Van Diemen suddenly found itself among the big players. "It wasn't until David designed the RF77/78 series that we got our act together and turned the corner," acknowledges Firman.

The sleek sharp-lined machine modernised FFord, and sold like hot cakes around the world, sustaining racing school fleets and giving thousands of punters their first taste of driving a racing car. It started the 100-plus cars per year stampede. They and the subsequent front-radiator RF79/80 evolutions (now regarded as classics) put Van Diemen on a sound financial path, enabling Firman and his wife Angie to build a new factory over the A11 trunk road from Snetterton circuit in 1981. Considerably more salubrious than its podunk predecessor and a local icon, they operate out of it still as RFR Cars, founded in 2008. "We never had a big workforce, another key to keeping overheads down," he adds.

At its height, from the Ayrton Senna RF81 era, when Van Diemens outnumbered rival marques on track, and race, championship and Festival wins encouraged car sales, everything moved up a gear.

"Teams sent their mechanics to build cars each winter, which required continuous parts supply and careful stock control, but they weren't on our books," says Firman. In fact, Angie kept all the balls in the air while he was overseeing production and running the factory race team with engineers of the calibre of Mike Galter and Malcolm 'Puddy' Pullen, and John Uprichard masterminded sales through a network of global agents.

In the summer of 1985, after 12 years, Van Diemen completed its 1000th car, for the FF1600 World Series race at Silverstone, the RF85s from which kick-started the category in Portugal. Subsequent thousands followed over shorter timespans. With FF1600 and FF2000 at the core and an unparalleled 11 Festival wins in the pre-1993 Zetec era, many with the works team, Van Diemen faced stout competition, particularly from Royale and Reynard on this side of the Atlantic - albeit only Lola duplicated at the Festival. But American David Bruns's revolutionary Swift DB1 rewrote the terms of engagement at the 1983 SCCA Runoffs.

Eventually, with toward 5000 cars sold (including for a raft of one-make categories and costly F3 and Sports 2000 blind alleys), the Firmans sold Van Diemen to the late Don Panoz's Elan Motorsport Technologies in the US in 1999-2000.

"On reflection we'd never have sold it had we known that they would run it down, although it was theirs to do what they wanted with," says Firman. "I don't think we realised how strong a brand Van Diemen was, but that there are currently Formula Fords racing based on David Baldwin's designs of the 1990s, and still winning, is fantastic."