• Iconic 20th Century sports saloon • Matching numbers example • Professional restoration completed in January 2026 • Invoices totalling £30,000 available To many - its designer Alec Issigonis included - the notion that the Mini might have a future as anything other than basic transport was anathema, and the idea of a high-performance version was laughable.

One man, though, saw it quite differently.

Racing car manufacturer John Cooper already knew a lot about tuning BMC's A-Series engine - he was running the company's Formula Junior effort at the time - and a test drive in a prototype Mini convinced him of the car's competition potential.

The result, launched in September 1961, was the Mini Cooper.

Enlarged to 997cc and suitably tweaked, the revised A-Series engine easily met its 55bhp target.

The extra power endowed the Mini Cooper with an 85mph-plus top speed, and to cope with this increased performance Lockheed developed special 7"-diameter disc brakes for the front wheels.

Th...