Clergyman’s vehicle gift put Paddy Hopkirk on the road to stardom

His most famous achievement immortalised both the man behind the wheel and the car itself as an icon of the era — his victory in the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally in a Mini Cooper S.

But that achievement wasn’t his first, or his last, behind the wheel in an illustrious career that began in the 1950s.

Born in April 1933 in Belfast, he recalled in an in-depth 2009 interview with the specialist Motorsport Magazine how he had first learned to drive at the age of just nine, after being gifted a single-seater vehicle by a local clergyman to whom he used to bring grapes.

“It was a thing called a Harding, with a 250cc JAP engine driving one wheel, and tiller steering,” he told the magazine. “Highly unstable. I learned to drive it flat out, sideways, around an estate near where we lived.”

Describing himself as “crap academically” but “always fascinated by mechanical things”, the dyslexic Hopkirk dropped out of an engineering course at Trinity College Dublin to take a job with Volkswagen assembler’s retail operation in Dublin.

There, he purchased a string of used Volkswagen Beetles to enter rally competitions.

By 1953, he had his first win under his belt at the Cairncastle Hillclimb and by 1955 he was a professional rally driver competing in the Circuit of Ireland.

In 1954 he led the Circuit of Ireland on the first day, and on the 1955 Circuit he won his class and the event’s Hewison Trophy, awarded to the most successful Irish rally driver of the year — an achievement he would repeat in three consecutive years.

His attention turned to the world stage, and he competed in the 1956 RAC rally in a Standard Ten.

The same year, he took third place in his first event outside of Britain and Ireland in the Tulip Rally in the Netherlands behind the wheel of a Standard Eight,

In 1959, in a Sunbeam Rapier he took a class win at the Alpine Rally, before claiming two Circuit of Ireland wins in 1961 and 1962 and finishing third at the Alpine Rally in 1961.

After becoming frustrated with the Rapier, he competed in an Austin-Healey 3,000 before making the move to the now famous Mini in 1963, finishing sixth in the Monte Carlo that year.

His 1964 victory in the famous race catapulted both him and the car to stardom, and he became a household name.

In his 2009 interview, he recalled: “I got a telegram from the Prime Minister [Sir Alec Douglas-Home] and another from The Beatles, and I was given the keys to the city of Belfast.

“The car was flown straight from Monte Carlo back to England, because Bruce Forsyth said he had to have me and the Mini on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. That was the biggest TV programme in the land then: it used to get 28 million viewers. They wrote a comedy routine about me and I drove the car onto the stage. The same week, hurrying to a BBC News interview, I made an illegal right turn. A policeman stopped me and said, ‘Who d’you think you are, Paddy Hopkirk?’”

That was far from the end of his racing career, however, and it was his heroism and gallantry in the London-Sydney Marathon four years later that would bring him international attention yet again.

Trailing the leaders in the penultimate stage of the 1968 race to the Bianchi-Ogier team, he came across an horrific scene — the race leader’s car had collided head-on with an oncoming vehicle that shouldn’t have been on the road.

But rather than pursue victory, he and co-driver Tony Nash stopped to rescue those involved in the crash — saving the life of seriously injured driver Lucien Bianchi.

In his later years, the father-of-three was an advocate for road safety.

In a 2019 interview with the News Letter after completing an advanced driving course with IAM RoadSmart [formerly the Institute of Advanced Motorists] at the age of 86, he said: “It doesn’t matter if you are a rally winner or a daily commuter, everyone can be a better driver.”

He added: “I really want to keep developing my driving skills because the roads are always changing – it is very important to be aware of what is around you, and to make sure that all road users are protected from the risk of injury as much as is possible.”

Mr Hopkirk married his wife, Jennifer, in 1967 and they would have three children together — Katie, Patrick and William.

The late Paddy Hopkirk is also survived by his six grandchildren — Molly, Jessica, Fenella, Amalia, Allegra and Alexander.