You'd be as well to change the engine or just the car if you're really unhappy with the performance, due to the following points:
1. You're unlikely to see any substantial speed or acceleration gains from even several hundred pounds worth of work. If you do bring it up to any horsepower of note (probably a couple grand's worth of work, or fitting a G-lader), it still would have been far cheaper just to sell on, buy a larger engined one, and stump up for the extra insurance (a couple groups higher) and slightly increased fuel consumption (couple mpg).
2. Trying to make a half-pint engined car acheive similar speeds to one blessed with the full glass will result in both frustration when you fail, and the thing self destructing after an uncertain amount of time from the attempt and from when you succeed. I got lucky in that mine stood up to quite a lot of such abuse until recently ... but now i'm having to fix it. As a daily driver i have a 1600cc instead, and though its costlier to insure, its not drastically more thirsty (bigger engine allows a taller top gear for better economy), and i am a good deal more comfortable with the power output... meaning it gets thrashed a
WHOLE lot less. (Do still thrap it from time to time, but only in emergency cases - whereupon it has acheivement far beyond what the 1043 could dream of)
I know it'd be a wrench, which is why i stuck with the little challenger for ages, pretty much until someone else forced me to switch.
The lightweight, precise handling and fingertip/seat-of-the-troos road communication is addictive though, and there's still a few country lanes which the heavier 1.6 cant boast more than a second's improvement on despite much fatter tyres --- that's coming from someone owning the 100-kilos-heavier mk3, to boot, on budget 145s! (the new car just doesnt give as much of a sense of the road or where the limits are, and can wallow a bit making you instinctively lift off far too early, where the little one just bounced and kept trucking, on full throttle and full grins all round the corner)
PS don't discount that weight advantage - did you see top gear last night? You're in possession of a 45 horsepower car that can match or possibly out-perform the 75 BHP pug 1007 (even in a straight line, and i'd bet easily on the bends)....

those transit-van doors plus all the crash-padding are HEAVY! 30-horsepower-disadvantage heavy!