Defending the British Motor Corporation’s title, this car claimed an outright victory in the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally, with ‘the Flying Finn’ Timo Mäkinen at the wheel and Brit Paul Easter as co-driver.

By mid-1964 the British Motor Corporation competition’s department had prepared a fresh team of the new 1275cc Mini-Cooper S models, but this car was not very successful until the Monte Carlo Rally of January 1965.

On this occasion, the car ran in Group 3 guise, which meant that it was substantially non-standard. The rally was one of the most difficult on record, with extreme blizzard conditions between Chambery and Monte Carlo; the snow drifts were so high they came over the top of the Mini’s roof!

During the Mountain Circuit, a contact breaker spring in the distributor snapped - Mäkinen and Easter not only had to diagnose the fault but also fix it during the snowstorm. In spite of this, Mäkinen completed the entire route from the starting point in Stockholm to Monte Carlo, with no penalty points. Out of the 237 teams that started the rally, only 35 made it to the finish line.