The full Monte

THIS week I've come to a depressing conclusion. The great rallying legends that were Paddy Hopkirk, Timo Makinen and Rauno Aaltonen were all economical with the truth.

Anyone with a nerdier disposition and innate knowledge of how camshafts work will already know what these three chaps have in common; they all won the Monte Carlo Rally, and they all did it in a Mini. Unfortunately this fine pedigree in Europe's most famous rally might give you the impression that Minis are made for winter motoring. This is wrong.

Regular readers will already be bored with my ongoing infatuation with Britain's best-selling small car, and how I'm happy to forgive it no matter how many times its distributor/brake cylinder/steering (delete as appropriate) stops working.

I've also explained to my other half, who is German and therefore doesn't understand the point of owning something if it doesn't work, that inventing things but making it badly is somehow the British way, like eating fish fingers or secretly wondering why Brookside got cancelled.

It's a fantastic car, but it still seems impossibly far removed from the idea it could win a rally on the icy roads of Monte Carlo not once, but three times. I've no doubt it could handle the Col de Turini, but what good is that when you can't get the windows demisted?

Every morning I squint through the windows and see the Mini's been given the white roof treatment, but it's always layers of icy frost rather than the Mini Cooper upgrades I actually wanted. And even though I've invested in a new heating system, it's still no better than getting an asthmatic to blow through a straw.

By the time the windscreen's cleared up again, your times on a rally stage would be so bad you'd have been better off walking it, so I can only guess that the 60s stars did it using a blend of pace notes and balls.

I did want to borrow one of the original Mini Cooper S rally cars to prove this point, but as they're now worth around £100,000 I don't think I'll be finding out any time soon.

Paddy, Timo, and Ruano weren't liars then. They're legends because they probably couldn't see anything.