Garrie Cooper

Garrie Cooper was Australia’s most successful domestic race car constructor and a multiple national champion.

Garrie was Australian Sports Car Champion, 1.5-litre (F2) Champion and winner of the 1968 Singapore Grand Prix, all in cars of his own design and manufacture. He was the driving force behind Elfin sports and racing cars, winners of 29 Australian and International titles.

Elfin Racing cars provided the foundation of some of Australia’s great motor racing careers, amongst them multiple champions John McCormack, John Bowe and Larry Perkins.

Garrie built his first Elfin , the Streamliner, in his first Adelaide workshop in 1959. The design, based on a Lotus 11, was so successful that he completed 22 of them before production moved on in 1963.

Elfin was at the forefront of the adoption of Formula Junior in 1961. It provided a cost efficient alternative to importation .

In 1975 Garrie won the Australian Sports Car Championship in his radical MS7, a car that converted with ease to also be a F5000 open wheeler, providing customers effectively with two cars in one.

His MR9 was the country’s first, and only, ground effects F5000 racing.

Garrie was presented with the Advance Australia Award in recognition of his contribution to the South Australian economy.

He is only the third engineer-constructor to be elevated to the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame. The others are Phil Irving, designer of the Repco Brabham engine and Ron Tauranac AO who was Jack Brabham’s engineering partner.

Garrie Cooper died in 1982, aged 46, of heart disease.