This is going to sound a bit convoluted, stay with me.
Firstly, your car isn't a Cooper S. There was no such thing produced as a main model in the '90s. Your car probably started life as a Cooper, but may have been just a plain old Mini. The VIN number will reveal the truth.
Your car was probably modified by John Cooper Garages of Worthing. After Leyland dropped the Cooper name in an effort to save costs (£2.00 per car incidentally, seriously short sighted as it cost them millions in lost sales) John Cooper produced several packs to modify Minis and these were mainly fitted at his own garage. Late model packs such as yours were covered by the Rover warranty (except the 5 speed box) and to all intents and purposes were official cars but were not actually produced by Rover. Whoever first bought your car probably bought it through John Cooper and the conversion would have been done before they got it. The packs had slightly different names given to them every few years but yours is probably a John Cooper Sport 5. There should be a plaque rivetted to the floor crossmember that tells you what pack it has fitted and what production number it is. So what your car actually is is simply a Mini or Mini Cooper with a dealer fit modification pack, many different dealers (AEG, Broadspeed etc) made similar packs in the '90s as the popularity of the Mini was recovering and people jumped on various bandwagons.
The S in Cooper S never stood for anything at all, it's just there to denote that it's a different model. John Cooper just liked the sound of it. In this case it doesn't mean Cooper S though, it refers to the modification pack. The I stands for injection.
For insurance purposes, unless they specifically cover the John Cooper or other modification packs you won't get full coverage. It should be declared as what it is, a modified car. You will probably have to use a specialist insurer to get decent cover. Also, any value you give them is merely part of how they calculate your premium and doesn't represent what they will pay out in the event of total loss unless you have what is called agreed value insurance. If you don't have an agreed value policy, they will pay out at the blue book price for the base model of the car before it was modified.
Great read.........still a few points about the John Cooper Garage cars I dont fully understand. Did John Cooper buy the cars from Rover at cost and then have free rein to do his own modifications on them and then sell them on....or was it some kind of deal with Rover where he could do what he wanted with them then pay Rover a %?
Do you think people in the mini world truly class these JCG cars as limited editions or just a nice John Cooper spin off?
Both our minis are JCG cars, people know of Max's model (not him personally lol), but Paddy is technically the rare'r of the two cars but most mini peeps have never heard of him.
All the JCG cars are my weakness and its so hard to find any information on them, Ive managed to get a few old mini mags ect but brochures and details seem to be like donkey pooh.
Anyone with any info/pics of the JCG cars/stories/brochures would be great!!
