‘Now that really is a beautiful looking racing car! Wotizzit I wonder’, the young gent seems to thinking…
The smartly attired chap is surveying the lines of Len Lukey’s Cooper T23 Bristol at Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west in May 1958. Len Lukey was both a champion driver and successful businessman, founding ‘Lukey Mufflers’ in the 1950s, a brand still respected today.
Melbourne-born, Lukey started racing relatively late, aged 32, having established and built Lukey Mufflers from its Nepean Highway, Highett base. Generations of enthusiasts are aware of his name because of the original equipment and performance exhausts and mufflers he produced. No lowered, worked EH Holden with wide chromies and twin SUs was complete without the distinctive Lukey logo being displayed on its exhausts for following traffic to know its performance intent.
Lukey started competition in the Victorian hills with a side-valve Ford Mainline Ute, Australia’s ubiquitous workhorse down the decades. It was in this car at the opening Altona meeting in 1954 that he frightened the life out of Stan Jones in Maybach when he spun whilst coming through The Esses, the car looking all the while as though it had lost its way transporting a load of mufflers from Highett to Williamstown. The competition regulator, the CAMS, frowned upon the use of such utilitarian vehicles in racing, so he switched to the first of a series of Ford Customlines.
It’s interesting to review the stunning march of touring car domination of Australian motor racing and look at the role Len Lukey had in its rise. Australian Motor Sports had this to say in its January 1960 issue, ‘…there can be no doubt that by tuning these massive cars to the highest possible pitch, Len Lukey started the ball rolling towards the day when the term production car racing became such a farce that a special Gran Turismo Class had to be instituted’.
Lukey had some spectacular moments as he learned his craft, a trip through the hay bales at Albert Park and a lucky roll at Phillip Island, there was no rollover protection in those days, both were lucky escapes.
The car was timed at 106mph at Gnoo Blas, Orange in 1956, beating both Jack Myers and the Aldis Bristol. His dices against Jack Myers, the Sydney Holden driver, were crowd pleasers in the way Geoghegan/Beechey battles were a little further down the track.
He soon took hillclimb class records at Rob Roy, Hepburn Springs and Templestowe, all in Victoria.
Both Myers and Lukey progressed into single-seaters via Cooper Bristols. In Lukey’s case, his ascent to the top was quicker than just about any Gold Star winner, and then, he almost immediately upon achieving the prestigious award in the longest ever season, 12 rounds in five states, retired as a competitor but remained in the sport as a circuit owner and sponsor.
Lukey commenced racing the ex Reg Hunt/Kevin Neal Cooper Bristol in 1956…
He was ninth in the ‘Olympic’ Australian Grand Prix won by Stirling Moss at Albert Park in a works Maserati 250F.
In the 100-mile Victorian Trophy race he was fifth behind Davison’s Ferrari 500/625 3-litre, Brabham’s Cooper Climax, Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S and Tom Hawkes’ Cooper T23 Holden, it was an auspicious open-wheeler debut. He started a campaign to contest the Gold Star the following year- the first time the Australian Drivers Championship had been contested.
The season commenced at Caversham, 16km from Perth, held in searing heat and famously won, after much argument about lap-counting, by Davison’s Ferrari, which was shared by Lex and Bill Patterson. Len was fourth in a fast, reliable run in the Cooper. He was fifth at Albert Park and then late in the season scored two thirds in the New South Wales Road Racing Championships at Mount Panorama and in the Port Wakefield Trophy held at the South Australian circuit in rough bush country 100km north-west of Adelaide.
He set Australian National Speed Records in both the Cooper – 147.4mph and the Customline at 123.3mph – outside Coonabaraban in north-western NSW in 1957.
The Cusso was timed one way at 130mph, the car that weekend was festooned with masking tape, shields over its headlights, an enclosed radiator and sealed doors and boot to squeeze every bit of speed from the beast. Len had to enter the car through the windows; safety was again very much to the fore!
The car which ran at Coonabarabran was a new shell, but all the learnings and good bits of the earlier one were transferred across. Len raced it for a further year before being selling it to Melbourne driver Owen Bailey but it was badly damaged in an accident at Albert Park in 1958, Bailey’s first meeting in it.
Its amazing to compare and contrast the short four or five round Gold Star contests of later years with the more arduous nature of the series earlier on, particularly given the standard of Australian highways then.
The 1958 award was contested over nine rounds, starting at Orange in New South Wales, from there to Fishermans Bend in Melbourne, then south across Bass Straight to Longford, to Port Wakefield north of Adelaide in South Australia, then two rounds at Lowood, Queensland, in June and August. So I guess depending upon other race commitments, one could leave your car up north, then to Mount Panorama, Bathurst in New South Wales for the Australian Grand Prix in October and then, finally, two rounds in Victoria- Albert Park in November and Phillip Island in early December.
The 1959 Gold Star was held over a staggering twelve rounds, and so it was that Len committed himself to a couple of serious tilts at the title in 1958-59, the lessons learned in 1958 were applied with great success the following year when he won the title.
Len was third in the opening South Pacific Championship round at Gnoo, Blas Orange in January, Jack Brabham won that event in his Cooper T43 Climax but was ineligible for Gold Star points as a non-resident.
Back home to Victoria, Len was fourth at Fishermans Bend in February and fifth in the Longford Trophy in March. Stan Jones won at the Bend and Ted Gray at Longford in the big, booming Chev Corvette 283cid V8-engined Tornado 2.
He scored his first splendid Gold star win in the South Australian Trophy at Port Wakefield in April, winning from Austin Miller’s Cooper T41 Climax and Keith Rilstone in the amazing Zephyr Special s/c.
Then followed a long haul back to Melbourne to ready the car and then a 1650km tow to Lowood Queensland for the two rounds held on the disused airfield circuit.
He bagged a pair of thirds in the Queensland Road Racing Championship at Lowood in June and the Lowood Trophy in August. Alec Mildren won both of these events in his Cooper T43 Climax, with Len looking lovingly and with considerable longing for one of these mid-engined cars, an aim he would realise before the year was out.
Lukey had developed his own thoughts on how to improve the performance of his Cooper and built a new spaceframe, high-bodied chassis, the ‘Lukey Bristol’, into which the mechanicals of the factory car were fitted.
Ready for the AGP, the car was taken to Bathurst but finished a distant sixth, two laps in arrears of Lex Davison, Ern Seeliger and Tom Hawkes aboard a 3-litre Ferrari 500/625, a 4.6-litre Maybach 4 Chev and a 2.3-litre Cooper T23 Holden-Repco, respectively.
The last two rounds of the championship were back in Victoria, he was fifth in the Melbourne Grand Prix, an exciting race weekend in which Stirling Moss and Jack Brabham scrapped at the front of the field in 2.2-litre Cooper T45 Climaxes, the race won by Moss from Brabham then Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S, Bib Stillwell’s ex-Hunt Maserati 250F and then Len.
Lukey was quickly in discussion with Brabham about the purchase of the Cooper T45, the very latest of Surbiton’s machines at the time, and would soon have the 2-litre Coventry Climax FPF-engined machine in his workshops, providing him with the tool to do the job in 1959.
Len was still active on the hills, winning both a new NSW sprint record and FTD at Mt Druitt in 13.53 seconds; this article’s opening photo is at that meeting. In July, he spun at the end of Rob Roy when the throttle jammed open. Len was thrown from the car before it rolled to a halt, but it was a lucky escape.
The final Gold Star event was the Phillip Island Trophy on Boxing Day but Len spun the Cooper in a preliminary event, damaging the car’s suspension enough to non-start the championship race. The Coad brothers sportingly lent him their Vauxhall Special but the car was outclassed, with Lukey third in the Gold Star with 21 points, then Alec Mildren on 23 with Stan Jones deservedly taking the title with 31 points. Stan won two rounds at Fishermans Bend and Phillip Island and was third on three occasions- Gnoo Blas, Longford and the first of the two Lowood rounds.
After Brabham contested three New Zealand internationals in early January 1959, Lukey bought the car from Jack. It was fitted with a 2-litre FPF rather than one of the 2.2s Jack had been using. These engines were rare with the full 2.5-litre variants built around new blocks being readied back in Coventry for Cooper, Rob Walker and Lotus’ use in F1 that season – rather successfully so as events transpired.
In 1959, as mentioned above, the Gold Star was contested over 12 gruelling rounds, between 26 January and 14 June, the halfway mark of the season, those on the title chase travelled from their home base, to Orange, then Fishermans Bend, Longford, Port Wakefield, Bathurst and Lowood – Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland, with an arduous second half of the season still to come.
The competition was strong, Len and Alec Mildren raced Cooper T45s, Bill Patterson a T43 with Stan Jones the other racer who had committed to most of the rounds, racing his Maserati 250F, Maybach 4 Chev and later in the season he took delivery of a Cooper T51 Climax as did Bib Stillwell, David McKay and Austin Miller but the latter trio did not race across the continent in the manner Len, Alec and Stan did.
In much the same way that the new-fangled Coopers were challenging the front-engined orthodoxy in Europe, so too, of course, was the case in Australia, albeit there was no surprise at the speed of the Coventry Climax-engined cars, given the giant-killing nature of the air-cooled Coopers since the first appearance of one at Bathurst in the dawn of the 1950s.
Only two points separated the Cooper T45 Climax duo of Lukey and Mildren at the seasons end – Len won the title with 68 points to the Canberra motor-dealers’ 66.
Mildren won three rounds, Fishermans Bend and the two Lowood rounds mid-season, whereas Len won two- at Caversham and the last round at Phillip Island when the pressure was well and truly on. The Cooper’s differential failed during Saturday practice. Len did not have a spare; Noel Hall did, but it was affixed to his car, which was in Sydney. Jack Myers removed the gearbox and popped it onto a plane, the precious cargo was collected from Essendon Airport and then taken to Phillip Island where it was fitted to the car. The machine was finally ready about an hour before the off. Lukey led from the flag and on the final lap equalled the lap record, a memorable win indeed.
Stan Jones won two rounds as well, notably the Australian Grand Prix at Longford after a race-long dice with Len. It was a classic battle of the time between the powerful front-engined 2.5-litre Maserati and the more nimble, but less powerful 2-litre Climax-powered Cooper. There was a bit a karma in Stan’s race win as no-one in the field, other than Mildren, deserved an AGP win more and Alec’s time came twelve months afterwards after an even more thrilling dice between Lex Davison’s 3-litre Aston Martin DBR4/300 and Mildren’s 2.5-litre Cooper T51 Maserati at Lowood.
Jones also won at Port Wakefield in March in the big, booming Maybach 4 Chev, stepping back into the car he vacated two years before when he acquired his Maserati 250F. His friend and engineer, Ern Seeliger had replaced the SOHC straight-six Maybach engine with a Chevy V8, and made other changes to what had been called Maybach 3. There was something a bit poetic about a Maybach taking one last win this late in the piece, given the front-running nature of this series (of three or four variants of cars, depending on how yer do your count) of cars for the best part of a decade.
Bill Patterson, like Mildren and Jones had a very long race CV which he enhanced in 1959 with two wins in his Cooper T43 Climax – arguably a quicker driver than Mildren and Lukey, if not Jones – Patto was also in a run to Gold Star victory, his turn would come in 1961 aboard a Cooper T51 Climax the year after Mildren.
Single round wins that year were taken by Jack Brabham, taking his traditional win at the season opening Gnoo Blas South Pacific Championship before heading back to the UK and by Kiwi Ross Jensen’s Maserati 250F in the prestigious Bathurst 100 at Easter, but neither qualified for Gold Star points as non-residents.
Bib Stillwell was the other round winner in his new Cooper T51 Climax at Bathurst in October. Bib was perhaps the slowest of all of this generation to mature as a driver at the absolute top level but he won four Gold Stars on the trot from 1962 to 1965 with a blend of speed, consistency and the best of equipment.
What was impressive about Lukey’s ’59 win was his relative inexperience against the fellows he beat, all of whom had fifteen years to a couple of decades on him in race experience, but it was a close-run contest. That year, a driver could only count their scores from nine of the twelve rounds. Len and Alec scored in ten rounds apiece; both had to drop a round – both discarded three points, and so it was after a long, intense year of racing criss-crossing the vast brown land that Lukey won from Mildren by only two points. Amazing, really, but the CAMS learned the lesson and the event was never held with that many rounds again.
Lukey only raced once more, in the 1960 NZGP at Ardmore and then sold the car to concentrate on his business interests.
It was a good performance too, seventh on the grid amongst all of the 2.2 and 2.5 litre FPFs but it all came to nothing after undisclosed dramas after finishing 36 of the events 75 laps. Brabham won from McLaren, Stillwell and Jones – two Cooper 2.5s from two Cooper 2.2s rather put the state of play at the time into sharp relief.
Whilst Lukey retired from competition to focus on his business, he remained a friend of motor racing until his untimely death in 1978…
He provided financial support to various competitors, not least Jack Brabham. The works F1 Brabhams of the 1960s used Lukey exhaust systems right into the 1966-67 championship-winning Brabham BT19 620 and BT24 740, all of the works F1 cars were fitted with Lukey exhaust systems.
Look closely at the rear of one of the Brabham BT24 Repco 740s during the 1967 GP season in the photograph below, and you can see the Lukey Mufflers made exhausts on the car, and the company name on the chrome-plated exhaust endpieces.
In 1962 Len acquired a Holman Moody built Ford Galaxie ‘R Code’ 406cid four-door which was raced initially by Lex Davison, Len no doubt encouraging his purist racing car friend in the direction of the ‘dark side’. The shot below is of Norm Beechey racing the machine against Max Volkers’ Cortina at Lowood in August 1964, I wonder who got the better of this encounter in the wet? The Galaxie still exists.
The 1962 Armstrong 500 (miles) production car race resulted in extreme circuit damage to the Phillip Island track. The Phillip Island Auto Racing Club (PIARC) could not afford to repair the bitumen out of meagre club funds, and as a consequence, the track sat idle for two years.
During the initial track fund raising a decade before, Repco and Olympic Tyres supported bank guarantees for PIARC to a value of £17,000. Without funds to service the loan, no race meetings and therefore no income, Repco and PIARC made the regretful decision to sell The Island property.
Shortly thereafter Lukey was chatting to racer/enthusiast George Coad at Essendon Airport whilst awaiting a plane. Upon learning from Coad that PIARC was forced to sell the facility, Lukey immediately rang the clubs President and offered to buy it for £13,000.
As part of the deal, Len imposed a condition on the club that racing be revived. Lukey would develop the property and PIARC re-build the track and facilities and run four events a year for ten years. Lukey had a passion for the island and the circuit but also knew what it would take to revive and run the place having been a PIARC committee member some years before. PIARC paid Len $2 per year in rent.
The first public race meeting was held three years later in September 1967. The circuit was sold again after Lukey’s death and is now the wonderful facility we all know and love, without Lukey’s timely investment it would not be there today.
The Lukey brand hasn’t been in family hands for decades but lives on as a wonderful reminder of its founder, a great driver of both touring cars and single-seaters, a lifelong enthusiast and supporter of the sport.
Additional Lukey reading…
Do click on the links for these two short articles- their are some stunning photographs contained within. Here; https://primotipo.com/2018/02/20/teds-tornado-and-lens-cooper/ , here; https://primotipo.com/2016/01/08/stan-jones-agp-longford-gold-star-series-1959/ , and here; https://primotipo.com/2018/10/11/1958-longford-trophy/
Etcetera…
These big barges occupy a lot of real estate and did no harm at all to attract the punters. Touring cars were on the rise, sadly, even in 1956. Len Lukey from Norm Beechey in Ford Customlines during the 1956 AGP carnival. Is the Holden 48-215 on the right front below that of Jack Myers?
Cooper T23 Bristol..
Lukey’s Cooper T23 Bristol blasts past the Army Barracks at Albert Park during the 1956 AGP, and below the cockpit of the immaculately prepared Cooper at Templestowe Hillclimb in Melbourne’s east.
Doug Nye wrote the history of the 1953-built Cooper Mk2 Bristol chassis on The Nostalgia Forum in 2003. Nye lists ’11 (ish) to 12 (ish) chassis. The Lukey car is ostensibly ‘CB/9/53’.
‘1953 ‘5’ The Tom Cole Mk2 – in effect totally destroyed in fire at Syracuse
1953 ‘5B’ The Tom Cole Mark 2 rebuilt as above around a fresh frame, driven by Swaters, Cole, Graham Whitehead – to Dick Gibson – sold to Australia, probably Reg Hunt. (Reg Hunt’s Mark 2- alleged sold NEW in 1954) for Kevin Neale in Australia – to Len Lukey – Frank Coad – Eddie Clay – Ken Cox – Peter Menere – Jumbo Goddard, and to Tom Wheatcroft for The Donington Collection. But this was surely in reality the ex-Tom Cole second Mark 2 of 1953…ex-Gibson’ Nye wrote.
Gardening at Templestowe circa 1958, no harm done by the look of it.
It would have been a wild ride around Longford, mind you, the forgiving nature of the Cooper Bristol chassis would have made it slightly less challenging than some other cars of the day.
This wonderful shot is during the 1958 Gold Star meeting in March, the first ‘national’ Longford meeting won by Ted Gray in Tornado 2 Chev.
Len at Albert Park, guessing 1957, who and what is that behind him?
Lukey Bristol...
Lukey heads up the Mountain, Mount Panorama, during the 1958 Australian Grand Prix in October. He was well and truly outgunned in his new Lukey Bristol, which had made its race debut at the previous Lowood Gold Star round, on a circuit that rewards power and a forgiving chassis.
The Lukey Bristol was an evolution of the factory product, but lighter with a chassis designed by Lukey. It had a more enveloping body, clearly influenced by Frank Costin’s Vanwall design, and used castings made and machined in Melbourne. The engine from his Cooper Bristol was used; the new machine also had a transverse leaf rear end like the original.
It was advertised for sale in this form, as were the various components and fibreglass body panels. Bob King believes three of the chassis were built: the Lukey Bristol, Faux Pas and a third. Both cars mentioned are in the hands of David Reid.
The photograph above and below are of the construction of the Lukey Bristol at right, with the Cooper T23 at left denuded of its constituent parts, at the Lukey factory in the Nepean Highway.
Note the rifle on the wall to scare off late night intruders, ‘chicky-babe’ calendars on the wall and robust spaceframe chassis, who the artisans are would be great to know.
Things have progressed in the shot below with a rear suspension corner, straight off the T23 soon to be bolted on, transverse top leaf spring carried over, the chassis clearly lower and wider than the original.
The page above is included for the section about the ‘Lukey Mufflers Chassis’ and related components. I was going to crop and then thought, let’s all read it and weep – Frank Shuter’s Maserati 8CM will do me!
The ad makes mention of both front and mid-engined chassis availability, the former were of the type used on the Lukey Bristol, the latter built off a jig created from the Cooper T45 chassis. One of the Cooper experts will be able to hazard a guess as to how many chassis were built using this jig, it was not the only T45/T51 jig in Australia, either!
Len Lukey, Lukey Bristol chase Bib Stillwell’si 250F during the 1958 Melbourne Grand Prix; they were fourth and fifth, ex-Hunt Maserati respectively. Stirling Moss won the race in a Rob Walker Cooper T45 Climax from Brabham’s similar car – the chassis bought by Len at the end of the summer, and Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S. Look at the lean of the heads into the corner and the relative roll of the Lukey Bristol compared with the Maserati.
Winning at Part Wakefield in the Cooper Bristol in 1958 and contesting the 1958 AGP at Bathurst the same year, he was sixth. The #56 car behind is Bill Reynolds in the Orlando MG Spl 1.5 – Murrays Corner.
More Australian Motor Sports, this time incorporating the ad for the sale of the Lukey Bristol.
Cooper T45 Climax...
Lukey rounds Stonyfell Corner, Port Wakefield, South Australia, in the 1959 Gold Star round- Cooper T45 Climax. The shot below was taken during the Fishermans Bend Gold Star round in early 1959.
Information about this car is a bit opaque, like so many Coopers of the period, but the story goes something like this. Chassis T45 F2-10-58 was believed to be a factory machine raced by Jack Brabham until it was damaged at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix.
It was acquired by Jack after being rebuilt around a new frame, brought to Australia and raced to second place behind Stirling Moss’ similar Rob Walker owned car in the 1958 Melbourne Grand Prix at Albert Park, the last race meeting held at the celebrated circuit in its first iteration as a motor racing venue.
Jack then took it to New Zealand to contest the 10 January Ardmore NZ GP, again finishing second behind the Walker/Moss T45. He was second at Wigram and third at Teretonga behind Ron Flockhart, BRM P25 and Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T45 Climax and then headed back to Europe, Len acquired the car at this point.
The car was then bought by Melbourne’s Jon Leighton, who raced it successfully for a couple of years, albeit the competition got pretty tough with so many 2.2 and 2.5-litre FPF engine T51 Coopers on the scene.
It passed into the hands of Melbourne Architect Richard Berryman, then later to Len Lukey’s widow, the car was an attraction at the Phillip Island museum for many years during the long period the Lukeys owned the track, and was occasionally raced by Keith Lukey, Len’s son.
Robert Shannon, founder of the insurance business well known in Australia was the right kind of owner sensitive to the car and it’s importance. I recall speaking to him about it during Melbourne City Chamber of Commerce meetings on several occasions.
After Robert’s sudden death by heart attack, Ron Walker, ‘father’ of the Albert Park Australian GPs of today, owned it, did nothing with it, and then rather blotted his local copybook by selling it via Bonhams in the UK. It would have been rather nice if the Cooper, with such a significant Australian history, had been advertised locally and stayed here.
Do contact me if you can assist in filling the gaps.
Cooper T23 Bristol Today…
In June-July 2025 Guy and Harry Plante – father and son – custodians of the ex-Lukey Cooper T23 got in touch with the following information and photographs.
‘The Cooper Bristol was purchased by me (Guy Cape) in 2014 in the UK from Bob Gilbert, who bought it from the Tom Wheatcroft Museum. TW was friendly with a gentleman called Jumbo Goddard, a Bentley man who lived in Sydney, who sourced the car for him in Australia to then put in his UK museum.
When I bought the car, it was painted in Aussie colours, yellow and green ( I have pictures). Having researched its previous life before going to Australia I learned that the first owner was Tom Cole, a British – American racing driver, who, with his parents moved to the US the day before WW2 broke out. Cole raced a Cadillac-Allard J2 with the marque founder Sydney Allard, Cooper T23s and later a Ferrari 340MM in which he was later killed at Maison Blanche in Le Mans.
I returned the car to Cole’s Atlantic Stable racing team colours whilst keeping it as original as possible.
I still race it today with the Historic Grand Prix Association and have entered the Monaco Historique Grand Prix with it three times. Last year, I won the class with an overall 9th position out of 24 entries, beating my previous best of 14th position.
A few years back HGPCA drivers were invited to race in Australia. We did so at Philip Island where I was amazed to see so much history and memorabilia in the circuit’s museum. I told the lady in the museum that I know owned the car which she said ‘you can’t do it’s in a museum in the UK!’ She was very good friends with Keith and Lyn Lukey whom she telephoned to say some English nutter reckons he owns his dad’s car. We all met up, they came to watch me race and two weeks later we had a demonstration race before the F1 Grand Prix at Albert Park.
I was overseas at the time in 2024, but the car was also driven by my friend Will Nuthall at Goodwood Members’ Meeting, where it came first, winning the Parnell Cup (see some tremendous footage online).
I am 63 years old but have no intention of retiring from racing or ever selling this most wonderful car – it will be Harry’s turn next! I hope you find the above interesting – Harry has started the continuation of this fabulous part of motoring history.’
Credits and references…
John Ellacott, Kevin Drage, Ken Devine Collection, Bob King Collection- Spencer Wills photographer, ‘History of The Australian Grand Prix’ Graham Howard and others, Doug Nye on ‘The Nostalgia Forum’, oldracingcars.com, Wikipedia, Jock Walkem, Charles Rice, Geoff Smedley, Andrew ‘Slim’ Lamont, Greg McNeill, Austin Miller Family Collection, Guy and Harry Plante. Special thanks to Bob King for some wonderful photographs and tidbits from his AMS collection,
Tailpieces: Lukey with Cooper T23 Bristol sans bodywork, Templestowe circa 1958…
Finito…
