Mini Cooper and the Monte Carlo Raly

Living Legends
40 Years Later And Still On Top
Standing upon the windswept Col de Turini, high above the Principality of Monaco, I reflect that for car enthusiasts there are certain sacred places and events. They are touchstones to earlier times and venues that bring the evolution of cars and motorsports into focus. The 24-hour race at Le Mans is one. The Indianapolis 500 certainly qualifies. The 12 hours of Sebring is another. For fans of the Golden Age of Rallying of the 1960s, a visit to the Col de Turini stage of the Monte Carlo rally stands above...

Ring. Ring, Ring.

Paddy Hopkirk fumbles in his jacket pocket for his cellphone. The winner of the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally chats in a lilting Irish accent with his office in Dublin. When he is finished, I ask the rally legend, "When you won here 40 years ago in the Mini, did you ever think one day you'd be able to stand at the top of the Col de Turini and talk to your mates back in Ireland on a cellphone?" Hopkirk grins and points over his shoulder. "They just put that thing in and it really makes all the difference," he says as we both look at the steel cellular telephone tower sprouting from a snow-covered clearing 100 ft away.

It is safe to say the Monte Carlo Rally helped put the Mini on the car enthusiast's map. Prior to 1961, the diminutive sedan was considered a marvel of passenger packaging and a cute little economy car, but few took its performance seriously. John Cooper saw that the front-wheel-drive wonder had plenty of tuning potential and created the Mini Cooper in 1961. In the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally, the cars really showed their potential for the first time when Finn Rauno Aaltonen finished third overall and first in class (Hopkirk was sixth.) But it was the snowy event of 1964 when the Mini finally had its chance to show its mettle. Paddy Hopkirk won the event in a 1071cc Mini Cooper, with Timo Makinen fourth and Aaltonen sixth, also in Mini Coopers. Timo Makinen won the event in 1965 in a 1275cc Mini Cooper S, and Aaltonen took the laurels in 1967 in another Cooper S. That the British team didn't win in 1966 was a matter of politics, not stage times. Makinen, Aaltonen and Hopkirk finished first, second and third until their winning Mini Coopers were all disqualified for illegal headlights so that the factory Citron could win the French event. In 1968, Aaltonen finished third overall at the rally, but it was clear that more specialized rally cars were taking over the sport. The Mini Cooper's days as a rally superstar were over.

The early successes of the Mini Coopers on the Monte Carlo were met with nearly universal acclaim. The cars were cheery and cheeky, and by the mid '60s helped by their astounding rally successes, had established themselves as the car to have for the European in-crowd. Following his victory in 1964, Paddy Hopkirk received tons of congratulatory messages, including one from Beatle drummer Ringo Starr. "I keep that one," said Hopkirk. "It's framed in my loo."

Fast forward 40 years to Paddy Hopkirk's cellphone call on the Col de Turini. MINI, the car company, has brought Hopkirk, Makinen and Aaltonen, along with John Cooper's son Mike, to Monte Carlo to celebrate their rally triumphs. The three rally heroes are now in their mid sixties to early seventies, are in good health and each ended up living well after helping to put Mini on the map back in the '60s. After rallying, which Hopkirk admits was fairly lucrative for a top driver by the end the '60s, the Irish driver concentrated mostly on business interests. These included a company that manufactured a line of Paddy Hopkirk motoring accessories, many of them targeted at Mini owners. Still he has found time to run historic rally events such as the Pirelli Classic Marathon (he won in 1990). Rauno Aaltonen also stayed with the auto industry. After rallying for the BMW, Lancia, Saab and Nissan teams, Aaltonen was appointed chief instructor of BMW Driver Training and continues to teach driving and hosts multi-day snowmobile trips in his native Finland. Timo Makinen continued his phenomenally successful rally career into the 1990s with Ford and Peugeot and also has won the Finnish Offshore Powerboat Championship. Like his two former teammates, Makinen can still be found driving at historic rally events.

MINI not only brought rally legends to the 5,271-ft top of the Col de Turini, it also brought new and old Mini Cooper models to be driven over the hallowed ground. My first run is in a new MINI Cooper S. It is a completely modern car whose connection to the original Mini is more spiritual than mechanical. It has plenty of power and pulls strongly up the mountain roads and with its wheels pushed to each of its corners is easy to place on the narrow winding roads. The six-speed transmission has a pleasant notchy shifter, but the gear ratios are wrong for the numerous hairpin turns. First is too low and second is too high, and it's hard to decide which is the right gear. Rauno Aaltonen agrees with this and suggests that the normal five-speed transmission might have better ratios for this particular climb.