The Mini at Monte, Revisited

The Telegraph takes us on our journey through time and the Col de Turini and manages to paint to an incredible picture of the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally in the process. It’s a great read for anyone, but especially for those that don’t know the Mini’s history well. Here’s an excerpt:

The road sign says “16 Lacets”. That’s 16 hairpins in succession, some of them almost too steep to walk up or down, joined by short, narrow sections of never-quite-straight, never-quite-smooth asphalt, almost all with sheer rock faces on one side and vertical drops into oblivion on the other. Not to mention black ice, packed snow or the odd rock-fall around each blind approach.

Four decades have passed since the original Mini Cooper S first won the Monte Carlo Rally with a series of giant-killing performances on these very roads, and most things change a lot in 40 years. But whether you spell Mini with lower case letters as in 1964, or MINI all in capitals, as they do now it belongs to BMW, the Col de Turini (of which the 16 consecutive hairpins are a tiny part) is as thought-provoking as ever.

[ Old Mini or new MINI? Brian Laban decides, on the Col de Turini ]