Owen Maddock
Owen Richard Maddock was a British engineer and racing car designer, who was chief designer for the Cooper Car Company between 1950 and 1963. During this time Maddock designed a string of successful racing cars, including the Formula One World Championship-winning Cooper T51 and T53 models.
The T51 was the first mid-engined car to win either the World Drivers' or Constructors' Championships, feats it achieved in the hands of Jack Brabham in. A year earlier Stirling Moss had taken the first ever Formula One victory for a mid-engined car in another Maddock-designed vehicle: a Cooper T43. In addition to his Formula One work, Maddock also produced race-winning Formula Two, Formula Three and sportscar designs. After leaving Cooper in 1963 Maddock went on to a successful career as an engineering consultant, including a spell as a hovercraft designer working for Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight. In his spare time he also enjoyed racing hovercraft, and was a co-founder of the Hovercraft Club of Great Britain.
Away from engineering Maddock was an accomplished jazz musician. Among others, he was a part of Mick Mulligan's Magnolia Jazz Band, playing sousaphone, that featured George Melly on vocals. When the band decided to turn fully professional Maddock preferred to remain an amateur and left the group. He also counted saxophone, bass clarinet and piano among his repertoire, and continued to play and compete in jazz competitions until shortly before his death.
Early life
Owen Maddock was born in Sutton, Surrey, in January 1925. He was son of the architect Richard Maddock, who spent most of his life working for Sir Herbert Baker and was overseer for Baker's most controversial project in the United Kingdom: the rebuilding and destruction of large portions of Sir John Soane's Bank of England building in the City of London. Owen Maddock grew up in Sutton, and went on to study engineering at Kingston Technical College. During this time, in the latter years of World War II, Maddock also served in the local Home Guard regiment.In addition to his engineering studies, Maddock was a proficient musician. He was able to play a number of instruments, eventually including trombone, saxophone, bass clarinet, piano, and sousaphone. He excelled as a jazz player and was part of many jazz bands of the late 1940s and early 1950s, including The Mike Daniels Band and Mick Mulligan's Magnolia Jazz Band. As a part of the Magnolia Jazz Band, Maddock played alongside vocalist George Melly. In his own memoirs Melly remembered Maddock as "a tall man with a beard and the abrupt manner of a Hebrew prophet who has just handed on the Lord's warning to a sinful generation... and his hands, coat, clothes and face were always streaked with oil." Melly also recalled that Maddock could take his passion for jazz to extremes:
On graduation he gained Associate Membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, but his professional development was interrupted when he was called up for two years' National Service, during which he was stationed in Germany. After demobilisation Maddock went home to Surrey, and returned to Kingston Tech in April 1948 to complete a refresher course to maintain his AMIMechE status. As a part of this course he was required to spend eighteen months in a commercial workshop. At the time, Surrey was home to quite a few of the UK's smaller road and competition automobile manufacturers – including AC, Alta and HWM – and it was to the automobile industry that Maddock directed his attention.
The Cooper years
Following unsuccessful approaches to HRD and Trojan, Maddock was taken on by the Cooper Car Company, run by father and son team Charles and John Cooper. Charles Cooper had been involved in motorsport since the 1920s, having acted as racing mechanic to Kaye Don for many years, and had built John a racing special as a twelfth birthday present in 1936. Working at the family garage in Surbiton, the pair constructed their first motorcycle-engined racing car in 1946. A string of wins followed, raising the reputation of the Cooper 500 to such an extent that they were able to begin selling replicas to fellow competitors.Despite their growing popularity, by the time Maddock joined the company in September 1948 they were still not large enough to be able to justify taking on a full-time engineer. In addition to his drafting duties Maddock therefore also filled the roles of fitter, storekeeper and van driver, among many. Gradually the Coopers began to make more use of Maddock's drafting skills, however, realising that having proper technical drawings was preferable to sketching designs to full scale on the walls, where they were frequently painted over! Some smaller parts were fabricated from crude sketches, or frequently simply by eye. During his time with Cooper Maddock became renowned for the detail and artistry of his blueprints, and with a talent for lateral thinking his contribution to the design of Cooper's cars grew rapidly. By the time of Cooper's heyday the design process was essentially a three-way tag match between Maddock, John Cooper and star driver Jack Brabham. Maddock's protégé and eventual successor, Eddie Stait, later recalled to historian Doug Nye that "John had a lot of the original ideas and then Owen would add some very original thinking in developing those ideas; they were a team... and Jack of course contributed a lot."
Unusually for the time Maddock sported a full beard. As a result of this he quickly became known around the Cooper establishment as "The Beard", while to Charles Cooper he would always be "Whiskers". His mercurial temperament and volatile temper sometimes grated against his employers' nerves. Once, when a potential new recruit arrived for a job interview, Charles Cooper asked his secretary whether he had a beard. On being told that he did, Cooper told her to "Send 'im home. I've got enough trouble with the one I've got!".
Early Formula Three and Formula Two work
Eventually Maddock was installed in his own drawing office within the Cooper building, although it was somewhat cramped, being located beneath the works stores. Initially, Maddock's duties revolved around drawing or redrawing existing components and developing refinements on the existing Cooper 500 and 1000 cars. However, in 1953 Maddock was instrumental in introducing two design features that became Cooper trademarks for the rest of the decade: the curved-tube chassis frame and the "curly leaf" leaf spring location bracket. The car that both of these design innovations were pioneered on was the Mark VIII version of the Cooper 500 Formula Three machine.The curved-tube chassis
The curved-tube chassis was the more controversial of the two novel ideas. The existing Cooper 500 chassis design process had been one of evolution since the earliest production 500s rolled out of the Surbiton works in 1947, and had been based on simple, traditional twin longitudinal box-section ladder frame. With the introduction of the Mark V in 1950 this was augmented by a beefed-up and stiffened body support structure, creating a semi-space frame chassis. This was refined further over the next two years, with the Mark VI marking a switch to equally sized tubular upper and lower longerons, and the Mark VIIA introducing tubular upright sections as well. However, for 1953's Mark VIII the Coopers decided to start afresh with a completely new chassis design.A true space frame design uses only straight tubes, properly triangulated to pass loads either in tension or compression. Following proper engineering practice, when he started to develop plans for the new chassis design Maddock sketched out various straight-tubed space frame designs. However, when he showed each to Charlie Cooper his response was "Nah, Whiskers, that's not it..." Frustrated, Maddock finally went away and drew a frame in which every tube was bent. To his surprise, rather than dismissing it Cooper's reaction was to snatch the plans out of Maddock's hands and exclaim "That's it..." Although the curved tube design broke several engineering rules Maddock and the Coopers later rationalised their decision. Their arguments were that curved tubes could be located and routed so as to leave adequate space for mechanical components, and as the tubes could be run close under the car's bodywork this could be attached directly to the frame, saving the weight and complexity of a dedicated bodywork frame. Although the idea started as a joke Maddock would later defend the design, even in the teeth of strong criticism from Cooper's star driver Jack Brabham. Brabham would come to recall that Maddock was latterly an even more staunch defender of the curved-tube concept than Charles Cooper.
Moving into Formula One
The first Cooper car to enter a Formula One Grand Prix was Harry Schell's Mark IV, fitted with an V-twin engine, at the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix. However, Maddock's contribution to this design was minor. Cooper's conventionally front-engined Cooper Bristol cars also contested a number of World Championship Grands Prix during the Championship's Formula Two years in and. Mike Hawthorn's notoriously rapid example took fourth place in the 1952 Belgian Grand Prix to earn the first world championship points for Cooper, and third place in the 1952 British Grand Prix. The design of the Cooper Bristol was largely based on that of the Mark V Formula Three car, though, with Maddock principally acting as a draughtsman.Vanwall Special
Ironically, Owen Maddock's first bespoke Formula One design wasn't actually produced for the Cooper Car Company's own use. In early 1953 industrialist, and owner of the Norton Motorcycle Company, Tony Vandervell approached the Coopers to obtain their assistance in building a chassis for his forthcoming racing engine. Vandervell had been one of the early backers of the British Racing Motors project, but had become disillusioned with the management of that enterprise and had decided to strike out on his own.The resulting Vanwall Special was built at the Cooper factory and used a similar front-engined chassis design to Cooper's own Formula Two machines, but was designed from the ground up by Maddock. The chassis was described by test driver Alan Brown as being much more taut and well engineered than previous Cooper products. Brown gave the car its race debut in May 1954 at the International Trophy meeting at Silverstone Circuit. He was running as high as third place before an oil pipe coupling failed and forced the car into retirement. For the Championship season Vandervell employed the up-and-coming Peter Collins to drive the car. Seventh place at the 1954 Italian Grand Prix and second in the non-Championship Goodwood Trophy race were the best he achieved, before he wrote the vehicle off during practice for the Spanish Grand Prix that October.
A further four chassis were constructed to Maddock's design the following year, in Vandervell's own Vanwall racing team's premises across the River Thames in Acton, London. However, they wouldn't prove competitive until after a thorough redesign by Team Lotus's Colin Chapman in 1956. The Vanwall cars went on to take the inaugural World Constructors' Championship in, but by that time Cooper themselves were making inroads into the Formula One establishment.