60 YEARS OF THE MINI COOPER’S MONTE CARLO VICTORY

Sixty years ago, a Morris Mini Cooper 1071S, registration 33 EJB, was among the 299 entrants of the Monte Carlo Rally. As for the favourites, Motor Sport observed:

Most people had been expecting the powerful entry of eight Ford Falcons from America to sweep the board in the near dry conditions. However, the combination of dry road and stretches of ice did not suit the big powerful cars, which were forced to use tyres not ideally suited to either conditions.

But as history relates, first place was taken by the Cooper, driven by the 30-year-old Paddy Hopkirk from Belfast with Henry Liddon as his co-driver -

Hopkirk had won his first Hewison Trophy in 1955. By the following year, Standard-Triumph offered him a place as a factory driver in the RAC Rally, piloting a Ten saloon, and 1958 saw his first major success, winning the Circuit of Ireland in a TR3A. Hopkirk transferred to the Rootes Group in 1959, winning a class win in that year’s Alpine Rally and the 1960 and 1961 Circuit of Ireland in a Sunbeam Rapier.

In 1962, Hopkirk joined the British Motor Corporation team; Stuart Turner, BMC’s Competition Manager, remembered, “Paddy Hopkirk, who had been in the Triumph and Sunbeam teams, wrote to me and said he wanted to drive a car that was capable of winning”. Hopkirk later reflected that the works’ mechanics at Abingdon “would lay down their lives for you,” and he achieved sixth place in the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally at the wheel of a Mini.

33 EJB left the factory in the summer of that year and was one of a quartet of 1071cc Cooper S models entered by the BMC in the Tour de France. The Hopkirk/Liddon team came third overall in the Touring category, plus winning the handicap and the capacity class. Sporting motorists worldwide took note, while BMC’s French dealers were inundated with enquiries.

For the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally, Turner chose Minsk as the starting point after rejecting Athens, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Lisbon, Oslo and Paris. He explained, “Minsk was an obvious choice because it was the first time in 52 years that there had been a starting point in Russia, and so there was bound to be a lot of press coverage”.

Photo credit: the BMW Press Office

Meanwhile, Hopkirk decided to take a batch of nylon stockings with him to the former USSR - his plan was to swap them for a tin of Beluga caviar, which he would sell to the chef of a top Monaco hotel. When Hopkirk flew out to Warsaw, he met with a welcoming committee that reunited him with his navigator and EJB. Plus, in the great driver’s words:

They also tried to reunite me with a month’s production of Polish vodka. The local police had dreamt up this reception for us, which was very nice, but we had to drive the Mini up to Minsk the following day. I guess they knew how cold it would be and were just making sure that we had adequate anti-freeze inside us. And boy, it was cold. Alec Issigonis deserves full marks for designing such a super little car, but he had not given much thought to the survival of the occupants in a Russian winter. A Mini heater is a contradiction in terms. We were soon equipped with fur hats and fur boots. In fact, we probably, looked a lot like those Russian policemen that we all made fun of —they looked like tea cosies carrying guns.

Indeed, the night-time temperature fell below -40 °C, meaning the Cooper had to be tow-started.

The Rally commenced at 00:34 am on Saturday 18^th January, and when 33 EJB finally arrived on the Côte d’Azur, its crew was unaware of their place in the standings. Hopkirk recalled:

We did not know how things were. It took a long time in those days to get all the printing clock records in from the controls and do the calculations. I went to bed on the Tuesday afternoon. At about four o’clock on Wednesday morning, the telephone woke me. It was Bernard Cahier, the French journalist. He wanted to know how it felt to be the winner. I thought he was kidding and told him it was a bad joke. But he finally convinced me.

On the 21^st January 1964, the Mini Cooper S won the Monte Carlo Rally, and news of the victory spread worldwide. Hopkirk used the tin of caviar in the victory party. He also received telegrams of congratulations from Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the then prime minister, and The Beatles, who wrote: “It’s nice to be No 1, isn’t it? Stop.”.

And on the 26^th January 1964, 33 EJB starred in Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The idea of a Mini Cooper S and its crew sharing a bill with Tommy Cooper and Kathy Kirby on ITV’s flagship variety show now seems quite surreal. However, Tony Dawson, BMC’s PR wizard, and Bruce Forsyth, the programme’s compere, had keen eyes for publicity.

A British United Air Ferries Corvair flew Hopkirk, Liddon, and the Cooper S from Monte Carlo to Southend Airport. On the 26^th January, EJB was driven through London to the Palladium; Hopkirk regarded manoeuvring it through the theatre’s stage door as the most challenging part of the Rally. To quote Christy Campbell’s wonderful book Mini: An Intimate Biography:

As the bizarre spectacle came to a climax and befeathered Tiller Girls revolved around the car and its crew, the orchestra struck up Rule Brittania. More than twenty million viewers watched it in glorious black and white.

The reasons why the victory of 33 EJB still resonates today are many and various. It was the mastery of Paddy Hopkirk, the skill of Henry Liddon, once described as “one of the greatest co-drivers in the world of rallying,” and the dedication of the BMC team at Abingdon. It was also that sense of David versus Goliath, with a Cooper S battling the Ford Falcon Sprints.

Perhaps most importantly, the 33 EJB encapsulated the sense that the Mini was for all motorists and seemingly all road conditions, from the district nurse or the commercial traveller to the film star, the debutant–- and now one of the world’s greatest rally drivers. No wonder it topped the bill at the London Palladium.