ixo-MODELS

Series: Rally Cars Classic

RAC085 - BMC MINI Cooper S

Disqualified Winner Rally Monte Carlo 1966

Car #2 driven by T. Makinen – P. Easter

Die Cast

1:43 Scale (aprx. size L 2 7/8”  / 7.5cm; W 1 ¼”  / 3.2cm)

Released September 2006

Additional discount is available for regular customers.

Rallye Monte Carlo

Since 1911, the Rallye Automobile Monte Carlo is one of the oldest and prestigious in the sport.  This is the first Rallye of the year in the World Rallye Championship (WRC).  Stages run through French Alps were on a top of a very difficult terrain crews need to be ready to sudden, very difficult to predict weather changes.   A stage could start on dry asphalt but this can change in no time to icy road and / or heavy snow.    Generally, stages are tight and twisty goes up and down on slopes of Southern Alps, but they do have very fast stretches.  It gets dark early up in the mountains; and it is very trilling for fans to see bright halogen spotlights screaming into to the view.

Disqualification of 1966

After the end of the 1966 Rally Monte Carlo the future of this event was in doubt.

As a result of eight hour inspection made after the end of the race four British Cars expected to fill the first four places were disqualified (1^st place BMC Mini-Cooper, 2^nd Ford Lotus Cortina and two more BMC Mini) plus six other British Cars.  The reason: - “The British cars were disqualified because they used non-dipping single filament quartz iodine bulbs in their headlamps, in place of the standard double filament dipping glass bulbs, which are fitted to the series production version of each model sold to the public.”  British sad: “The British cars were equipped with standard headlamps - but the only way of dipping them was to switch to non-standard fog lamps.” To add for the confusion the same bulbs were used on British cars in two previous seasons including Rally Monte Carlo.  This isn’t it; new rules that lead to the problem were announced at the end of the previous season year and the rally organizers announced that the rally would be run under the old rules for the 1966 season but then announced switch after entries had been accepted. 

Anyway despite protests British were all ruled out of the prizes, the official winner was announced as Pauli Toivonen driven Citroen DS 19, which by the way used the same type of bulbs as disqualified British Cars but since it was fitted as standard on some models it was OK for the Citroen.