dr mini.. just wait until tremelune.. drives a classic mini with 13 inchers in the POURING rain. it is SCARY..   later bc

But what you really need to think about is that Sportspack arches and 13" wheels on a Mini make the front wheel bearings have a very short life and the big arches create more drag...ie, slower car. Not good IMHO!

With due respect to the owners of Mini's with 13" wheels you should drive a Mini with 13's before you buy one, they take away a lot of the Mini feel imo.
Any Mini can be made to look like a Sportspack externally as long it has disc brakes.
Along with the wheels and arches to do the job correctly the fenders need to be trimmed for clearance and you need a Sports pack steering rack or the steering limiter kit as the SP has a larger turning radius.
The air bag column steering wheel and column switches are different so is the wiring harness.

Buy the best Japanese spec Mini you can as there are plenty of legal ones here now and they have less or zero rust issues with a/c if you need it.

Unfortunately for me, I can't see your attached picture, but I think I know what you're talking about if you're mentioning arches. If I guess correctly, you want the "Sportspack" look, which was an option for the final series of Minis.

The external look consists of the arches and 13" Sportspack wheels. That's pretty much it. I believe the final series Minis had the thicker windscreen and glue-on rear view mirror, which would be the only other visible external clue I can think of.

If you want the interior to look like a 1997 or later Mini, then there's more work to do. Like an airbag steering wheel. But many older Minis have copied the Sportspack look, so unless you look inside or open the hood/bonnet it's not easy to tell the difference.

I'm thinking about buying a classic Mini. My favorite look is the Mark VII Cooper, but they are not available for import into the US yet. I'm wondering what, cosmetically, the difference might be for earlier 90s (and 80s) examples. Is it literally just those flares? What would it take to make a bog-standard Mark V or VI and make it look like this:

I'm open to a re-VIN, but I'd rather avoid it for hassle reasons, and I'd really hate to buy someone's stolen car.