Lancia Motor Club

Down on Paddy’s Farm

To celebrate 50 years of the Mini Cooper, the January edition of Practical Classics magazine is running an article reuniting Paddy Hopkirk with the car that led to his fame and fortune. Whilst Paddy driving a Mini Cooper is the centre piece, the main thrust of the Andrew Roberts written article is to pit this “hotted up district nurses car” against established sporting cars that were already in the marketplace. The cars that it is put up against are Riley1.5, Auto Union (DKW) 1000, Renault Dauphine Gordini, Saab96 and of course a Lancia – my Appia Series III.

The day of the test was the day after the Cotswold Economy Drive, when a quick run from Broadway to deepest Hertfordshire turned into a 5,500 revs in top gear blast up the M40 when a serious accident closed the entire road system around Oxford. BMW’s and Merc’s could not believe what was flashing them to move out of the fast lane! 

If you don’t want to fork out for the magazine and have a WH Smith’s “library“ near you, the article starts on page 6. The main photo on page 10/11 was a hair raising experience as after abortive attempts to get the shots on a stretch of dual carriageway, the photographer took us to a road variously described as “no through” or “one way” on which we were required to pair up and run at 40 mph with one car slightly ahead of the other and also very close together (normal dual carriageway positioning apparently looks terrible in photos) – having accomplished this and approaching the static camera position it was quite frightening to suddenly realise that the road was in fact a normal two lane road with traffic coming the other way! To get the perfect shots it was necessary to repeat the exercise twice more - the author very nearly had a driver’s revolt on his hands!

The picture taken at Paddy’s farm shows how happy he is to be photographed with such a superior car - or was he laughing at his own comments about Lancia and the “R“ word? I did manage to get him to admit that Lancia knew how to build successful rally cars but the writer much preferred to use Paddy’s “R” words in the article despite my protestations – ah that’s ”muttering rotters” for you!

 Sorry photo too big to post but should be in January's VL!

I read the article yestreday, nice to see the Appia in the article, but they could'ent resist the "R" word. My Mother had two Mini's in the 60s and the 70s and you could look out through the floors and watch the road go by. It's as if no other car suffered the the "R" word back then. ;D Happy new year. David.

I had one of the very last Rover Mini's on an X plate. It was a super car but I sold it because it was RUSTING. In particular the seams on the front wings were swelling with rust in the welds. My sister in law's W plate Cooper had been kept outdoors and was even worse with the rust completely penetrating through the wing seams.
The Beta Coupe that replaced the Mini has been kept outdoors for the last 3 years and has faired much better. That's a car supposedly notorious for rusting built in 1978 as opposed to a car built in 2000 by the time most car makers had banished rust for good.