Maxed-out Mini

The muscle-bound Mini is said to be moulded for an "individualist who is seeking to combine luxury with ultra-performance" ...and it's certainly got the latter.

The donor car's 1.6-litre supercharged engine is comprehensively worked over to liberate a whopping 198kW -- up 78kW on the standard Cooper S, and 51kW more than the already rapid Cooper S Works. No performance figures have been released, but with a power-to-weight ratio of about 175kW/tonne, it's likely to be in the eyeball-popping category.

Helping keeping all that grunt in check are adjustable, lowered suspension, uprated AP brakes and Michelin-shod 18-inch Konig alloy wheels. There's plenty of other fruit as well. How about colour-coordinated bodywork, sumptuous, fully re-trimmed red/charcoal Alcantara interior with deep pile carpets, additional instrumentation, and a host of other interior refinements?

However, all this tasty gear doesn't come cheap. A Mini coachbuilt by Radford to this specification would cost in the region of £30,000 in the UK ($70,000 in our money), depending on the exact spec. Because Radford tailors all its cars to exact customer preference, no two cars are priced the same.

There's plenty of history in the Radford name. The London coachbuilder made the original Mini a celebrity icon 40 years ago with its hand-crafted Radford Mini de Ville. Rare and opulent, the original Radford coachbuilt Mini was said to be the ultimate motoring designer label of the 'Swinging Sixties'.

All four of the Beatles had Radford coachbuilt Minis, and Peter Sellers bought one as a present for then wife Britt Ekland -- the couple famously pictured at Harold Radford's main London dealer with Sellers at the wheel of the car, driving out of a giant birthday cake.