The Definition of a Pocket Rocket Is This Type R-Powered Mini

For almost 20 years now this small company in the UK, called Z Cars: Classics Reimagined  has been tinkering around with lightweight chassis and potent motors in the quest of delivering a relatively cheap, ready to go, fun package to their customers.

Although they have mostly specialised themselves into swapping in Hayabusa or Civic Type R engines into old school Minis, it seems that they do handle other chassis/engine swaps as well. About a decade ago I've actually stumbled upon one of their 500 horsepower - Turbo Hayabusa swapped Minis that used to be quite fast around the European Hillclimb Championship circuit.

As for the car shown here, they decided to go for a K20A swap, the fabled Honda Civic Type R engine, which already outputs 200 hp from the factory while happily revving all the way up to about 9000 RPM - a rather race car-esque plane of existence to say the least.

With the whole car, engine included, weighs in at just a bit over 1600 lbs, that makes for a very impressive power to weight ratio, and a potentially very fun drive. This car was just recently brought back to life, as it needed shell restoration and a fresh coat of paint, a new floor, new inner wheel arches and a few other tweaks to have it working and looking as it should.

The whole thing just looks bonkers, and would probably look like a genuine toy parked anywhere near most cars in the U.S., so where safety comes to mind , you might be better off keeping this car away from public roads and closer to a racetrack - even a karting one looks like it could do the job just as well.