Successor to Cooper’s center-seat “Bobtail,” the Cooper Monaco T49 was named for the win at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix by famed British privateer Rob Walker’s Cooper-Climax Formula 1 car.

The Monaco was Cooper’s first production rear-mid-engined sports-racing model, designed expressly to meet FIA requirements of two seats, two doors, and a windshield, with a space frame covered by outer panels of lightweight aluminum on a 91-inch-wheelbase platform.

The model could accommodate a variety of engines, and indeed, the first eight examples delivered, known as the Mk 1 cars, were sold as kits for racers to fit with their own power trains.

The T49 offered here, chassis number CM/1/59, was the first production Cooper Monaco built and features double wishbone and coil-spring front suspension, transverse-leaf-spring rear suspension with lower control arms, rack-and-pinion steering, and four-wheel Girling disc brakes behind Cooper’s cast magnesium alloy wheels.

The driver and battery were pla...