If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, the management at Wood & Pickett of London must have felt blessed back in the 1970s, when copycat firms offering similarly upmarket coachbuilt Minis were appearing in ever greater numbers. Inevitably, though, as coachbuilding a bespoke Mini isn’t an easy process (being complex, time-consuming and expensive), most enterprises vanished as quickly as they’d appeared.
The NJC Mini featured here is perhaps the finest exception. Never heard of it? That’s not so strange, as no marketing whatsoever was carried out – zero advertisements and no brochures. Indeed, this lavish Mini was known only to the few people who could afford one at roughly four times the price of a new 1275GT. And so, while working on my book, Maximum Mini 2, I was eager to include the NJC and managed to find an example of the species for photography – a car that’s now believed to be the only survivor.
With information being so scarce, it was still a challenge to write the model’s history. In fact, magazine, which at least offered some insight.
