Paddy Hopkirk’s victory in the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally was such an event that he, his navigator Henry Liddon and their car, a Mini Cooper, were invited to appear at the London Palladium on Sunday night, an ITV show with an audience that sometimes does was approaching 20 million.
The rally, a three-day mid-winter event that brought participants from all parts of Europe to the Principality, with the winner being determined by a complicated handicap system, was closely followed by television and newspapers. The victory for a small British car, symbolizing the revival of Britain’s cultural energy, was seen as a cause for national celebration. The Beatles sent a telegram of congratulations, as did Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
Hopkirk, a socialite from Northern Ireland who died aged 89, was and remains a major figure in British motorsport, as a rally and racing driver, owner of a successful car accessories business, President of the Historic Rally Car Register and a Vice-President of British Racing Drivers’ Club.
Paddy Hopkirk, left, with navigator Henry Liddon at the 1964 London Olympia, who was demonstrating the Mini Cooper they had just won the Monte Carlo Rally with. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
Born in Belfast to Kathleen and Francis, he attended Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, Ireland. He gained his first experience of driving a car at the age of nine, when a clergyman bequeathed him an old two-seater bath chair in his will. On the grounds of a local estate, he learned to master the motorcycle engine and rear brakes, noting that “it taught you quite a bit about skid control.” The bath chair was followed by a motorcycle with a sidecar and then an Austin 7.
Despite having dyslexia, he studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He was automatically excommunicated for failing to ask permission from the Catholic Church to visit what was then considered a Protestant institution. “It gave me the freedom to kiss girls without committing a mortal sin,” he said.
He dropped out of college to take a job at Volkswagen’s Ballsbridge assembly plant outside Dublin and bought a used Beetle to win a hill climb in Cairncastle. It was in a similar car that he first took part in the Circuit of Ireland Rally in 1953. Two years later, driving a Triumph TR2, he took a class win at the event and won his first Hewison Trophy for Most Successful Irish Rally Driver of the Year.
Offered as a works driver by Standard Motor Company, he led the early stages of the 1956 RAC Rally in Britain and finished third in the Tulip Rally in the Netherlands that same year. In 1959 he moved to the Rootes Group, with whose Sunbeam Rapiers he won the Circuit of Ireland in 1960 and 1961 and brought in a class win at the Alpine Rally.
Impressed by Pat Moss’ successes in the powerful Austin Healey 3000, he switched to the British Motor Corporation in 1962 and drove a Healey to second place at that year’s RAC Rally. But it was with BMC’s small 1,100cc Mini Cooper S, prepared at the Abingdon factory in Oxfordshire by a group of mechanics who, as he said, “would give their lives for you”, that he achieved his greatest success.
Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon just before the end of the 1966 Monte Carlo Rally in snow. They finished third but were disqualified on technical grounds due to the type of headlight bulbs used. Photo: Popperfoto.com
In January 1964, he and Liddon made their selection from seven designated starting points for “the Monte”. Rejecting Glasgow, Athens, Lisbon, Oslo, Paris and Frankfurt, they chose to set off from Minsk, then in the Soviet Union. Hopkirk picked up a load of nylon stockings, which he bartered for a large tin of the finest Beluga caviar to sell to the chef of a top Monaco hotel. Competing against more powerful cars from Ford, Mercedes, Saab and others, Hopkirk and Liddon traversed roads treacherous through snow and ice to claim the trophy presented to them by Princess Grace. The caviar was consumed as part of their victory celebration, which Alec Issigonis, the car’s designer, also attended.
There would be many more wins and near-wins in Hopkirk’s long rallying career. In 1966, the Monte felt guilty after finishing third behind teammates Timo Mäkinnen and Rauno Aaltonen, only for the organizers to disqualify them all for using non-standard headlight bulbs, allowing a French car to win. In the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon via Kabul and Mumbai, he and Tony Nash finished second in their Austin 1800 after stopping to pull an injured rival out of a burning Citroën on the final day.
First part of a documentary about Paddy Hopkirk’s victory in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964
Hopkirk also enjoyed endurance sports car racing, winning his class at Le Mans in 1963 despite a 90-minute delay while his co-driver Alan Hutcheson dug his MGB out of a sandbar. He particularly enjoyed the Targa Florio, which took place over the narrow, winding roads of Sicily’s Madonie Mountains. His retirement from competition in the late 1960s allowed him to focus on his businesses, including a driving school, which he sold in the ’90s before starting a marketing company.
In 2016 he was made an MBE for charitable activities including supporting Wheelpower, the national wheelchair sport charity, and Skidz bringing experience working with cars for young people, some of which were Hopkirk’s original bath chair prior to its installation in the UK restored Motor Museum at Gaydon in Warwickshire. He was an ambassador for the Institute of Advanced Motorists and an advisor to BMW on its modern Minis.
In 1967 he married Jennifer Manser. She survives him along with her children Katie, Patrick and William and six grandchildren.
Paddy (Patrick Barron) Hopkirk, rally and racing driver, born April 14, 1933; died on July 21, 2022
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