Engines, at the back!

Stirling Moss, driving a Cooper T43, wins the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix (picture-above), becoming the first driver to win a Formula One race driving a rear-engined car. A revolution in motor racing was on its way.

The 1958 Argentine Grand Prix was held on 19 January 1958 at the Autódromo Municipal Ciudad de Buenos Aires. It was race 1 of 11 in the 1958 Formula One Championship.

The race was won by British driver Stirling Moss who took, in his Rob Walker-entered Cooper T43, his seventh Grand Prix victory by 2.7 seconds over Italian driver Luigi Musso (Ferrari 246 F1). Musso’s British teammate and future World Champion Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari 246 F1) was third.

Apart from being the first World Championship race win for Cooper as a constructor, it was also the first win for a rear-engined car and the first for a car entered by a privateer team. This win of a rear-engined car was at the time thought to be a fluke, and nobody imagined that the death of the front-engined car (picture-below) was just a year ahead.