Triton
(first posted 5/25/2012) I recently ran across a little story that explained why Triton/Norvin motorcycles became so popular and what started the movement to rear engined race cars in the fifties. If you are like me, you probably never thought much about what you would do to power a race car, especially when the engine size was limited to 500cc. It must be even harder if you are stuck in a situation where there are more shortages than anything else. Into this situation comes John Cooper in war ravaged post WW2 England. He’s smart and he wants to go racing. There is a major shortage of cars, but there are some choices.
Charles Cooper founded the Cooper Car Company. He did this with his son, the aforementioned John and his son’s boyhood friend Eric Brandon. They began building racing cars in 1946. The first cars built by the Coopers were single seat 500cc Formula 3 cars that were driven by John and Eric.
They were powered by a JAP (J. A. Prestwich) motorcycle engine. The prototypes were built, according to Wikipedia, by joining two Fiat Topolino front ends together. To me, many of the pictures look like the same belly tank we used to see on the land speed record cars.
According to John Cooper the engine was put behind the driver because it seemed logical as it was run with a chain. Eric won the first postwar race and quickly created demand from other drivers such as Stirling Moss, Bernie Ecclestone, and others.
Because they were inexpensive, Cooper quickly became the worlds first and largest post-war specialist manufacturer of racing cars for sale to privateers.
Cooper built over 300 500cc F3 cars and dominated the category. They won 64 of 78 major races between 1951 and 1954. Because of the volume they quickly got into the senior circuit competition and names like Brabham and Moss kept winning. Numerous efforts with bigger engines were created. Cooper ran front engine configurations too. The front engined cars made them realize how well the rear engined car handled.
Many say that Jim Clark’s 1965 Indy 500 win in a rear engined Lotus was just part of an ongoing evolution that started with the first Cooper Formula 3. All Indy winners since then have had rear engines.
Okay, so what does a baby race car have to do with a Triton or Norvin motorcycle and for you readers who are not bike nuts – what is a Triton or Norvin anyway? Norton developed the popular double downtube type frame. One of the early riders said it was just like riding a featherbed, and it became known as the featherbed frame as a result. It was developed primarily for racing and it handled very well.
Cooper-Norton
The Norton Manx engine fit the same basic category as the JAP. The car above is powered by a Norton. The Manx had a 500cc single cylinder engine with a four speed transmission. The only problem was that Norton wouldn’t sell an enterprising racer just a motor. You had to buy the whole bike, therefore, there were a lot of excellent Norton frames that could be had cheaply.
Norton Manx Engine
Triumph evidently would sell an engine without a bike, so the first known Triton motorcycle was a Featherbed frame with a 500cc Triumph engine. Triumph and BSA both had engines that were cheap for the time and as always, bikers have wrecks, resulting in a wide variety of parts bikes and engines: Triumph (“Triton”), BSA, Vincent Norvin”). Doesn’t seem to matter what you put it a Norton frame, it makes an excellent handling bike with a decent engine. I have even seen a Honda four. Hybrids before it was cool.
Norvin
People still race these little cars. I am also told you can now buy Norton Manx engine clones. So most likely there won’t be any new Tritons or Norvins being birthed anymore.
Triton
That third photo is pure art. Thanks for taking time to research and write!
Great series Lee featherbed frames came in two widths slimline and wideline and provide a brilliant basis for a pre 62 classic racer as you say doesnt matter what powers them you can drag the pegs thru a corner all day long. My friends Norstar had factory made engine mounting plates the swaps were so popular someone went into production of kits and cotrary to a previous claim it had a slimline featherbed frame with a interstate tank which caused handling problems if filled up it held too much fuel by weight worked better with 2 outlets and only a gallon sloshing around. Keep researching you are doing my memory a world of good.
Thanks for the comments. That and wikipedia keep it going. The Manx has always been a big favorite of mine and the Commando was the bike I wanted most that I never got. Don’t know why. It wasn’t the product that killed the company because the Nortons were always tops. Bryce, I think you will expecially enjoy the next two articles that are already in the can.
Be thankful you never got a Commando the bottom ends are rather weak as in still 500 Dominator grade Norton leaned it forward bored it out and called it good but durability wasnt its strong suit.
Yes.. I had a ’67 650 ‘SS’ engine in a ’65 Atlas frame (as the Atlas 750 engine was like the later 750 just hopeless for longevity and had literally ‘blown-up’ within two years) ..and the ’67 650 ‘SS’ frame had been demolished in a fatal accident involving it’s apprentice m/bike mechanic owner ..so the two Norton items were amalgamated into one usable bike !
But, even the smaller 650 Norton engine was hopeless ..it had power alright (54 horse from memory, like the BSA 650, Bonnie only had 47 I think) but it blew blue smoke from the right hand pot continuously no matter what I did … something to do with the position of the oil pump in the timing chest right next to the crankshaft main bearing and an oil gallery, and the big end top shell whatsmore had an opening in the top to squirt hi-pressure oil up against the underside of the piston crown apparently..
..so the cure was to use a blank top shell with no oil opening in the top …that trick still didn’t work …blue smoke continued
bring on the pre-unit Thunderbird engine
what a dream engine by comparison to Norton’s appalling engineering
did you ever try to replace the cyl head on the Norton? unlike the removable rocker boxes of the Triumph, the one piece head of the Norton was a drama trying to keep all those pushrods in place as you lowered the head ..it was not really a one man job to do that essentially
to this day I only like the Norton’s wee ’88’ parallel twin… quite a nice little donk that seems smooth and semi-reliable..lol (498cc)
I had no idea of Cooper’s origins, thanks! Now “Cooper” is a daily sight worldwide, ironically on a front-drive car.
John Cooper modified the original Minis for BMC for rally amd race competition BMW just puts on decals trading on his name.
I’m sure they will be paying royalties!
I think it was something like a pound per car that BMC paid the Coopers. At some stage the BMC management (or could have been British Leyland at that stage) decided they didn’t like paying that money and replaced the Cooper S with the 1275GT – and sales virtually came to a halt.
Charles Cooper had to buy steel from air raid shelters that were being dismantled to build the early production cars, such were the shortages. The government would only give carmakers an allocation of new steel if the cars were being exported to bring in foreign currency ( like US Dollars ).
My father bought straightened Anderson shelter corrugated iron to roof a garage for his Chev it was the only roofing steel available in post war NZ
I’ve always known the story about why the Triton was developed, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen a picture of the racing car that started the ball rolling. Thank you very much.
As to the genesis of the Triton: The Featherbed frame was, quite simply, THE best handling motorcycle frame available worldwide back in the ’50’s (and ’60’s, and . . . .). Add the slightly later developed Roadholder forks, and you’ve got a frameset combination that will still be reasonably competitive with a modern aircooled engine. It also had lots of space within the “square”, so you could stuff just about anything available at the time in there, just take some duraluminum sheet stock and cut yourself the mounting plates. Which means you not only had Tritons, but Norvins (Featherbed with a Vincent V-twin – this was the most difficult conversion as the engine would only fit with a bit of modification to the frame), Noriels (Featherbed with an Ariel Square Four), NorBSAs (BSA vertical twin, natch), NorField (Royal Enfield) – and I had an acquaintance in England who built a Norasaki in the 80’s (a Kawasaki H2 750cc two-stroke triple – imagine that power/weight ratio with honest to god handling and controllability!).
Tritons predominated in the ’50’s and ’60’s because back then the Triumph 500 and 650cc vertical twins were the British equivalent to the small block Chevy: easily modifiable and there was pretty good aftermarket support. And why Triton? Because Noriumph or Norumph just doesn’t trip off the tongue nearly as well.
Thanks for enlightening me on this. I knew about Tritons, and the Cooper, but never made the connection.
The Cooper was an immensely influential car; you’re right, this is where Colin Chapman started from.
Sure looks like fun racing those little cars. But I doubt I would even fit in one!
Got that (2XL) tee shirt! An embarrassing episode where I tried to get my 6′-2″, overweight frame into a Lotus Europa (at the downscale dealership’s showroom–ah, the early 70s) cured me of Europa lust. Perhaps I should have worn less tight jeans, too. Oops.
I’ve seen a few Cooper 500s racing, they are unique sounding with the bike engine. Also very quick as the power to weight ratio is epic. As they don’t have starter motors they are quite unique in the pits – typically the team will have a car driving a set of rollers to bump start the engine.
As for the Norton frames, there were some that gained Hillman Imp engines as they were relatively light at 170lb and could give 100+hp.
OK, silly question time: Why call these rear-engine cars when by other standards they would be mid-engined? For that matter, beyond Formula Vee are their any classes of race cars with the rear engine behind the axle? I can’t think of any real advantage of that configuration as far as performance is concerned.
In the 1950s we weren’t sophisticated enough to invent the term “mid-engined”.If you look at the Cooper 500 it’s pretty obvious the driver is in the middle, and the engine isn’t in the front so it must be in the rear.
There is no good reason for putting the engine behind the back axle, other than to use a Beetle motor and transmission without somehow reversing the direction of drive. Don’t forget, the original Porsche was “mid-engined” but the cost of adding extra gears to the transmission meant production cars ended up with the motor hung out at the back.
Porshe should have know the crown wheel can swap over in a VW trans so the engine can go at either rear or mid thats how formularVs are built and Kombis with geared hubs
I don’t think it’s a silly question but it seems uncle mellow gave a good answer. Perhaps behind the driver would be a better descriptor than rear engine. The vw transaxle has been flipped many times to make them a mid engine race car with better weight distribution. VW went rear, as described by Unc. M. for the reason of money and they weren’t built to race. Weight dist. is great for snow country but not for road racing. Mid engine is better and even the porsche in the cover photo actually appears to have the engine above or in front of the axle.
Good point from both of you.
The Formula 1 car in the top photo is a Porsche 804. The first successful mid-engined Grand Prix car was an Auto-Union based on Porsche’s mid-engined P-Wagen project of 1932. It in turn was inspired by the 1923 Benz Teardrop Tropfenwagen, midengined and predicting the Cooper’s body style. http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-abc/Benz-Teardrop-S-1280×960.jpg I think that the Brit’s relentless effort to market their invention of existing ideas found purchase here.
I bow to your knowledge, however, nobody argued against your point that the Brits were not the first. The article intends to state that the cooper started or accelerated the shift to mid/rear engine cars because of it’s success. Nothing that I read stated that they were the first. It gave convenience and efficiency as the reason they settled on that design. There have probably been others. Perhaps even before the ones you cite.
Cooper enjoyed tremendous success. His claim to fame as forwarded by this article is not as an inventor. It is as a pragmatic engineer who used what he had and showed both innovation and success. It would probably not be fair to accuse the Brits of claiming the inventions of others based on this article. I have no clue as who was the actual first person. I am rather sure that it’s not the same as being the first known successful racer.
Good picture of a car that does look remarkably similar to the Cooper F3. Good job.
Obsession with aerodynamics has ruined Formula racing. It would be easy enough to write a rulebook that forced current cars to be shaped like that Porsche and its contemporaries. Lord knows, the current rulebooks dictate virtually every inch of shape, so the cars are prety much indistinguishable once you strip the advertising off. But of course, that wouldn’t be “high tech”.
I like it very much. Its a very useful article. I like the way you explain the things. Keep posting. Thanks
So much good information here ! .
Thanx , keep it up .
-Nate
At the same time as the Cooper 500, Kurtis built about twice as many midgets in the US. Post war, US midget racing was the most popular and lucrative in the world. The US had money and wanted to be entertained.
My cousin in England is currently building a Harton I guess it would be called, Norton featherbed frame Harley Davidson engine, it sounds like quite a weapon like a Norvin on the cheap.
Harley-Norvinson would be another good name, perhaps?
I am interested in seeing how your cousin’s Harley-Norton hybrid turns out. I assume that cramming an HD V-twin engine in a Norton featherbed frame will be a tight fit, as it was with the Norvins. About 15 years ago I saw a UK magazine article about an HD Sportster restyled to look like a Norvin, but without changing the original Sportster frame (attached below); an actual HD-Featherbed hybrid should be far more interesting.
Thanks for the reruns, Paul, as this is a post I missed the first times around. I knew of all these vehicles but didn’t know the “why” of how the F3 Coopers and Tritons or Norvins were related. A college classmate rode a Norton twin powered Manx, so it was all Norton but still a hybrid. It used the vertical cylinder 650 (Atlas?) engine, not a later 750 or 850 sloped cylinder Commando engine. I never rode it, but had a chance to follow him through some twisty canyons on my Honda and it – and he – was fast. Unlike my other friends and classmates, he actually had a fleet of vehicles, including a Corvair engined Beetle which felt terrifyingly fast when he gave me a ride. He also had a Corvair powered Corvair and a VW powered VW T2. An air-cooled kinda guy, I guess.
Thanks for this article, I was only vaguely aware of the F3 Cooper cars, and didn’t know anything about the Triton connection.
Those J.A.P. engines were total loss lubricated and designed for speedway motorcycle racing, which they dominated for 40 years until the emergence in the late 1960’s of the ESO/Jawa Speedway engine.
https://cybermotorcycle.com/archives/exeter-speedway/jap-engines.htm
https://cybermotorcycle.com/archives/exeter-speedway/jawa.htm
Wot, no Ogri?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogri
I am going to made a model of this wonder: could someone write me where to find the precise dimensions of the vehicle? Thanks a lot!