A lot of owners spend a lot of money on very unnecessary parts. I blame the two 'comics' for advocating modifications which are totally not needed on road cars.
A good example is camshaft choice. Because the cam grinding companies all want you to buy their cams, they will tell you that theirs will out-perform another, probably equally good cam.
In fact, what is most important is the quality of the engine build and it is surprising what can be achieved by careful parts selection & accurate assembly (known as 'blueprinting'). I built a 'standard' engine for a 1990 Endurance Rally Cooper 1275. I had to use 21253 pistons, all standard crank & rods. I bored it to 1330 cc as allowed by the regulations. It had a distributor with a better advance curve and a new MG Metro cam. I cleaned up the inlet manifold, did a little bit of work to the head by smoothing out the head chambers and matching in the valve seat areas, The valve guide bosses were slightly reduced in size, the 'short-side-radius in the inlet tracts smoothed out and then face of the head skimmed by 0.027". The flywheel was slightly lightened. I assembled it very carefully and it had 84 bhp at 5700 rpm. The best thing was how good the torque was. I revved it to just under 7000 rpm on rally tests and it was reasonably competitive with modern cars of up to 1400 cc except in terms of road cruising speeds.
You don't need to spend a lot of money to make a Mini very nice to drive, obviously in a 'retro' sort of way.
There are no 'fast road Minis, just 'not quite so slow ones'.
