Mal Simpson, Bill Pitt and a mystery fellow (M Simpson)
The LPS Motors/Bill Pitt Cooper MkV Norton being prepared for the November 1954 Australian Grand Prix, at Southport on Queensland’s Gold Coast…
The above sentence was easy to write, the skill is having the knowledge/research ability/database to be able to identify these mystery photos taken by the late Mal Simpson, a prominent Australian race mechanic of the fifties and sixties whose photo collection was being progressively uploaded onto ‘The Nostalgia Forum’.
Facebook is good fun for ‘light and fluffy’ photo sharing but the serious dudes of motor racing research who hangout on TNF have solved and debunked many racing knotty problems and theories in the last 15 years or so- check it out if you have not.
No less than ‘History of The Australian Grand Prix’ co-author John Medley got the research ball rolling with the first shot posted above- identifying both Cooper models and possible owners as Bill Patterson, Bill Pitt and ‘less likely, John Crouch’.
When John saw the second photo below, uploaded a day or so after the first, with Simpson identified in each shot, it provided more evidence. He felt the ‘pusher’ on the right was Bill Pitt and therefore the probable owner of car #5 as being the Lewis/Swinburne/Pitt- LPS Motors Cooper MkV Norton raced by Bill Pitt. Click here for Pitt’s history; https://primotipo.com/2016/03/18/lowood-courier-mail-tt-1957-jaguar-d-type-xkd526-and-bill-pitt/
Then my friend and Cooper expert Stephen Dalton stepped up to the plate confirming ‘pusher’ Pitt via some earlier photos he had of him and proffered the view that these Queensland cars were both entered in the ’54 AGP meeting- Pitt ran the MkV but blew the engine in practice, racing a Jaguar instead and Charlie Swinburne raced the #2 Cooper Mk IV. Stephen dated the photographs as late 1954 at least- ‘as The Triumph TR in the background (can you see a peek of it in the shot below) helps date the photo to probably late 1954 at the earliest- I think that’s when TR’s first arrived in Oz.’
So, Stephen concludes, ‘…is this the lads preparing the cars at their LPS Motors for Southport?…’
Nice work guys!
Unidentified chappy- help required, Mal Simpson and Bill Pitt with Cooper MkV (M Simpson)
Photo and Research Credits…
Mal Simpson Collection, John Medley and Stephen Dalton on The Nostalgia Forum
More Cooper MkV Reading…
https://primotipo.com/2014/12/08/cooper-mk-v-jap-penguin-hillclimb-tasmania-australia-1958/
Finito…
primotipo... 