31 Facts About 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.

Owen Maddock counted saxophone, bass clarinet and piano among his repertoire, and continued to play and compete in jazz competitions until shortly before his death.

Owen Maddock was born in Sutton, Surrey, in January 1925.

Owen Maddock 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.

Owen Maddock was able to play a number of instruments, eventually including trombone, saxophone, bass clarinet, piano, and sousaphone.

Owen Maddock 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.

However, in 1953 Owen 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.

Brabham would come to recall that Owen Maddock was latterly an even more staunch defender of the curved-tube concept than Charles Cooper.

The design of the Cooper Bristol was largely based on that of the Mark V Formula Three car, though, with Owen Maddock principally acting as a draughtsman.

Owen Maddock was running as high as third place before an oil pipe coupling failed and forced the car into retirement.

Owen Maddock had been studying the theories of Professor Wunibald Kamm and decided to implement such an arrangement on the new car.

Owen Maddock developed this the subsequent year into the Mark II, or Cooper T43, model.

Owen Maddock was sixth, only one place out of the points, but better was to come.

Owen Maddock credited this particular innovation to Jack Brabham, who received the suggestion from his Australian friend, Ron Tauranac.

Brabham and Cooper contributed other detail improvements, but Owen Maddock left the fundamental chassis frame virtually unaltered from the T43.

However, to support this skin, rather than using traditional bulkheads and metal ribs, Owen Maddock specified a lining of aviation-grade honeycomb structure aluminium with a fibreglass inner skin, forming a sandwich structured composite.

On his departure from Cooper Owen Maddock took up a post as a designer with Saunders-Roe, a large aeronautical engineering company based on the Isle of Wight.

Owen Maddock moved down to the island and settled in Cowes, near to the Saunders-Roe factory.

Owen Maddock would remain in Cowes for the rest of his life.

Owen Maddock had been drawn to the firm because of its leading role in the development of the hovercraft; he had maintained an interest in aeronautics since taking up gliding as a hobby few years previously.

Owen Maddock remained with the company after it was merged with other Westland Aircraft hovercraft engineering concerns and Vickers-Armstrong to form the British Hovercraft Corporation.

However, when the industry hit a downturn Owen Maddock was made redundant.

Owen Maddock later joined propulsion and light engineering specialists Elliott Turbo Machinery.

Owen Maddock acted as technical secretary for the clubs for many years.

Owen Maddock lightly modified and productionised the Player's No 6 design for CanaHover Ltd.

Owen Maddock worked on many aspects of the car's design, but perhaps his most lasting contribution to the future success of McLaren in sports car racing was his design for the McLaren four-spoke cast racing wheel.

Owen Maddock preferred to remain a freelance and declined their proposal.

Owen Maddock had always been a prodigious walker and cyclist, despite being asthmatic, and remained active until very shortly before his death.

In later years, following the decline of the British hovercraft industry, employment had become hard to find and so Owen Maddock returned to his love of jazz.

Owen Maddock played woodwind instruments for various local groups, and regularly competed on the piano in jazz competitions.