AUTOMOTIVE Indulgence

Back in the 1960s, if you were looking for a car that could offer the epitome of luxury and the trendiness of a Mini all wrapped up in one, you needed to look no further than a coachbuilt, Radford Mini. This Mini’s first owner decided to mimic the livery of ‘R 1000’, a coachbuilt Radford from Harold Radford’s personal fleet that was the first Radford Mini to be displayed at the Earls Court Motor Show and was also used in promotion displays. She chose a Rolls Royce Porcelain White body with red interior, in line with R 1000’s Rolls Royce Ivory White body colour.

Radford had added Mini conversions to its repertoire in April 1963, offering three different ‘Mini de Ville’ models including an entry-level version Bel Air and the Grande Luxe which offered a full spectrum of luxury and performance. The third version, the ‘de Luxe’ model, retained more of the Mini’s exterior features while offering limousine levels of comfort. The ‘Bel Air’ and ‘de Luxe’ versions were both offered as upgrade packages which could be applied to any Mini saloon of the customer’s choice, at an ex-labour cost of just over £87 for the former or £223 for the latter. According to Steve Burkinshaw, Coachbuilt Minis Registrar of the Mini Cooper Register: “to equate a Radford to an unmodified Mini, the Grand Luxe top end model, with all the trimmings, was priced at just over £1,000 whereas a standard, unmodified Cooper was priced at £569 including a large amount of purchase tax, which was the early version of VAT.”