In the aerly 60s BMC toyed with twin engined 4WD Minis.
"Twini" Mokes were built, as well as a Downton-tuned saloon racer. This latter was entered in the Targa Florio.
John Cooper was a big advocate of the Twini concept. Unfortunately, he had a very nasty accident in a Twini Moke, an accident that nearly claimed his life. BMC management called a halt to Twini development after this, but John Cooper always remained convinced that the Twini could have become a top-flight competition car.
In 1960, Alec Issigonis, patented a 4WD system for transverse, front (single) engined cars.
In the late Sixties, Issigonis created a Moke replacement called the ANT. It was based on the platform of the Mini's big brother, the 1100, and used this 4WD system. A number of ANTs, probably about 60, were built but the Leyland takeover of BMH in 1968 put the kibosh on the car reaching production. Leyland owned Rover, and Rover begat Land Rover: the upshot was that the ANT was killed off.
A few years back an ANT was sold at auction here in the UK for about 4500 GBP.
In the early 70s, BL management asked Special Tuning to produce a 4WD Mini for a televised motocross event.
The car was built around the transmission of an ANT that was still in use by the Longbridge factory - it was used to pull cars off the production line.
The 4WD Mini had its first outing in 1971 and won first time out. Unfortunately, it did suffer from reliabilty problems in later events but with development who knows what could have been achieved?
Anyway, I have pix of the ANT, 4WD Mini, and the Twini Mini, if anyone's interested.