Goodwood Festival of Speed has a way of surfacing builds that shouldn’t exist on paper, and VINI is one of them. It belongs to David Power, a MINI enthusiast whose name alone makes an absurdly overpowered MINI feel almost inevitable. What he actually did with it is the interesting part. Most people chasing big power out of a small MINI reach for a turbo kit or a built version of the stock engine. Power skipped that step entirely. The R56’s factory 1.6-liter four-cylinder is gone, and in its place sits the 4.0-liter S65 V8 that BMW enthusiasts know from the E92 M3, an engine that revved to 8,300 rpm in its home chassis and made its name as one of the last great naturally aspirated M engines before the switch to turbocharging.
Rear-Wheel Drive Was The Only Option
Dropping an S65 into a car roughly a third the M3’s size creates an obvious problem: 450 hp is not something you send through a MINI’s front wheels and front subframe. So Power didn’t try. VINI is rear-wheel drive, built around the same 7-speed dual-clutch transmission BMW’s M GmbH used behind the S65, paired with driveline components pulled from a Subaru Impreza to get power to the back axle. None of this is a bolt-in job. Power’s company, Powerflex, spent about five years fabricating the car, and it shows in details that go well beyond the engine swap.
Track-Focused Hardware Throughout
VINI was built as a track tool, and the chassis reflects that. Power fitted a custom-tuned Bilstein suspension setup along with a substantially upgraded braking system, four-piston calipers at all four corners and a programmable race-spec ABS unit from Bosch. The exhaust is a one-off, as are most of the other mechanical components required to make a V8, rear-drive drivetrain fit inside a car that was never meant to hold either.
Step inside and the R56’s original cabin is mostly gone. The DCT shifter is lifted straight from the M3. Cobra shell seats with Schroth harnesses replace the stock buckets, and the dashboard and door panels are carbon fiber. There’s no rear seat: in its place is a roll cage and an ATL fuel cell built to motorsport safety standards, not a shelf for groceries.
Great Power-to-Weight Ratio
Strip out the novelty and the spec sheet stands on its own. Around 450 hp, roughly 1,300 kg curb weight, and a power-to-weight ratio under 2.9 kg per horsepower. For context, that would put VINI near the front of BMW’s own power-to-weight rankings among production cars, despite starting life as one of the least powerful MINIs BMW ever sold. It’s a reminder that the R56 was always a light, tossable little car underneath the badge, and that the S65 V8 remains one of the more transplantable engines in BMW’s back catalog, provided you have five years and no fear of cutting up a perfectly good MINI to make room for it.
[Photos: Bimmertoday]
