PADDY HOPKIRK MBE 14th APRIL 1933 – 21ST JULY 2022

In 1964 some 299 cars were poised to take part in the Monte Carlo Rally including six BMC factory Mini Coopers. Their competition was fierce, with British Fords, Chryslers, Citroëns, Mercedes-Benzs, Saabs, Sunbeams, and Volvos due to take part. 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 Morris Mini Cooper S, registration 33 EJB, driven by Paddy Hopkirk with Henry Liddon as his co-driver.

At that time, Patrick Barron Hopkirk was aged 30. His first rally vehicle was an Austin Seven ‘Chummy’. In later life, he reflected “On Saturday afternoons the lads would borrow their mums’ Morris Minors and Ford 8s, find a crossroads up in the Wicklow mountains, put down a few pylons and some chalk lines, and someone would stand there with a stopwatch and time you”. On leaving Trinity College, he worked at the Volkswagen assembly plant in Ballsbridge, and won a hill climb in a second-hand Beetle.

By 1955 Hopkirk drove a TR2 and won his first Hewison Trophy, and in the following year, Standard-Triumph offered him a place as a factory driver in the RAC Rally, piloting a Ten saloon. 1958 saw his first major success, winning the Circuit of Ireland in a TR3A. In 1959 Hopkirk transferred to the Rootes Group, winning the 1960 and 1961 Circuit of Ireland in a Sunbeam Rapier and achieving a class win in the 1959 Alpine Rally. 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 achieved sixth place in the 1963 Monte Carlo Rally at the wheel of a Mini. For the 1964 Rally, he chose Minsk as a starting point and took a batch of nylon stockings with him to the former USSR. He planned to swap them for a tin of Beluga caviar, which he would sell to the chef of a top Monaco hotel. Hopkirk was to later recall, “we didn’t have the same TV coverage in our day. So the folks back home used to crowd round the wireless for news of our progress, which all added to the fascination of the event”. Famously, when 33 EJB arrived on the Côte d’Azur, its crew was unaware of their place in the standings. Hopkirk was asleep in his hotel room when he received a call from the French photojournalist Bernard Cahier, telling him of a probable victory, providing the Cooper S did not break down on the final stage the next day. The reporter from Motor Sport later noted:

The eventual winner came as something of a surprise to the rally world as well as to the successful crew, Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon, who even by the end of the last test did not realise that their performances had been good enough to secure first place.

That tin of caviar was used in the victory party while Hopkirk received a telegram of congratulations from The Beatles. 33 EJB and its crew even starred on the 26^th January edition of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, appearing on the same bill as Tommy Cooper and Kathy Kirby. The idea of Hopkirk, Liddon, and the Cooper S appearing in ITV’s flagship variety show was the idea of the host Bruce Forsyth, and so the team was flown from Monte Carlo to London via British United Air Ferries Corvair. But, according to Hopkirk, the hardest part of the Rally was driving the Mini through the theatre’s stage door.

Paddy Hopkirk retired from rallying in 1970, and it would take an entire book to do justice to his competition career. If one incident can stand for the many, it is when he and his co-drivers Tony Nash and Alec Pool recused Lucien Bianchi and Jean-Claude Ogier from a burning Citroën DS in the 1968 London – Sydney Rally. And here, courtesy of British Pathé, is the great man at the wheel of 33 EJB. He will be greatly missed.