When British Leyland pulled the plug on the original Mini Cooper S back in 1971, it left a sizeable void. If you wanted a Cooper in the 1970s or ’80s, you needed to source an ageing original or soup-up a more basic model yourself. However, something else was afoot in a small village just north of Romsey in Hampshire, masterminded by a somewhat mysterious self-taught engineer with a remarkably keen eye for detail.
Nick Vrotsos is a name that will probably be unfamiliar to a large proportion of Mini fans, but his story is a fascinating one. Having set up his Vortz company while still a teenager in the mid-1960s, he turned his hand to virtually anything – automotive and beyond – with big Jaguars and diminutive ‘Spridgets’ among the early cars given hefty performance hikes. Minis were increasingly involved from 1974, though, and Nick would go into production with his own take on the Mini Cooper from ’77 – a move that would see several different retro-styled models hand-built over the following 20 years. Nick became synonymous with Vortz, to the extent that most people knew him simply as Nick Vortz.
It would be wholly unfair to label Nick’s Minis as mere replicas, because they were so much more. Brand new cars werearound 20 per cent of the original parts remaining. This meant the appropriate authorities could be persuaded these were new, Vortz-produced cars with their own model type, albeit still under the original manufacturer banner on the registration document. Outside the UK, Nick was even able to establish Vortz as the vehicle manufacturer. Most of the 340 cars built in total across the various different models went to Japan, but not all – as this very significant and incredibly special example proves.
