Bruce McLarens original racing car

By Paul Lewis and Graeme Hill

1:17 PM Sunday Jan 24, 2010

They found it in the back of a butcher's shop in Australia, so the story goes. What the very first car that Bruce McLaren

ever built was doing among sausages and cuts of lamb isn't known but the rather beautiful Cooper T70 has a meaty place

in history: it is the car that created one of the great motor racing companies.

McLaren the F1 team is still going strong, of course. Adam Berryman, the 41-year-old Melburnian who owns this original of

originals was going strong too as he enjoyed an afternoon at Hampton Downs in the festival which is celebrating Bruce McLaren

this weekend and next.

"My dad found it," said Berryman yesterday. "No one wanted a 10-year-old racing car that wasn't competitive and wasn't historic."

But it was. McLaren in 1964 was a works driver for Cooper, the famous UK-based outfit whose name is still enshrined in the Mini Cooper.

He may always have been a works driver had it not been for his wish for Cooper to win the Australasian motor series of the day

- the Australian Grand Prix, the New Zealand Grand Prix and the Tasman series.

"Bruce looked at the F1 cars and figured they'd be too heavy and too slow for the series out here," said Berryman,

whose father Richard recognised the history behind the cars in the butcher's shop. "Bruce wanted a lighter, faster machine.

"In the end, John Cooper persuaded his father Charles to give young McLaren his head - and the Cooper T70 was born ...

even though it was designed, built and financed by McLaren but using Cooper resources.

Read the rest via :-

http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/motoring/news/article.cfm?c_id=9&objectid=10622018

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Interesting stuff, SiP. I wonder if it'll ever get to McLaren in GB..?