Vintage Thing No.40 - the Hillman Imp

If we had a republic in Britain the Hillman Imp might have had a better start in life. Its launch was rushed so that Prince Philip could visit production under way at the new showcase factory at Linwood in Scotland. It wasn't really his Royal Highness' fault that the Imp was not adequately developed. In fact, if we'd been a republic and suits at Rootes would probably have got the President of Britain in on the same date.

As it was, the Imps soon developed a poor reputation for fertility and unreliability. I can remember, as a car mad tax of about six or seven, being shown in him by my father at our local garage. This was Solway’s, now the Town & Country Nissan dealer at Marazanvose on the A30. "That," he told me, "is the worst car ever made."

He'd just been talking to the mechanics of getting our Anglia serviced.

Roll forward to the summer of 1981. I’d had my driving licence for nearly a year and was about to start a course at Falmouth School of Art. My mum said she would buy me a car for the daily journey. We weren't exactly flush, you understand. My father had died of cancer the summer before and I guess this was my share of his life insurance money, although nothing was ever said about this at the time.

She did attach some conditions, however. The car would have to be cheap, economical and insurance group one and this was in the good old days when we only had eight insurance groups. To these attributes I surreptitiously added the quality of tuneable. Research soon threw up the Hillman Imp as the prime candidate.

On paper it looked really good. It was the only overhead cam engine in its class at the time. With trailing rear independent suspension and a unique design of low-pivot front swing arms, the Imp could be made to handle really well. The Imp had been largely designed by Tim Fry and Mike Parkes who were determined to make this little car handle well. And Mike Parkes went on to race Ferraris. At the time, I didn’t think it looked anything special but with time its looks have improved and I think the Imp Californian coupe looks especially good.

It may only have been 875 cc but it was an all alloy power plant and very light. And it could rev, too. I also knew that it was really a Coventry-Climax engine that had been de-tuned for production. All I would have to do to make it go faster was to replace the go-slower parts. This seemed much easier than adding go-faster parts to a Mini.

With a bore and stroke of 68mm x 60.37mm, the 875cc engine was nicely over square but there was the option of re-lining the block to allow 72.54mm bores and 998cc. And when I read about Paul Emery’s Imp tuning exploits in an old Car Mechanics magazine, I was sold. He could wring over 120bhp from Imp engines and, at great expense, developed long stroke cranks that made 1150cc possible with a 75mm cylinder liner.

Over the summer holidays, I worked as a pump monkey and general dogsbody at Solway's Garage and when the staff heard I was going to buy Hillman Imp they were scandalised. But, with the confidence of youth, I would not be swayed.

"There is something like 300 years of motor trade experience in his garage, "said Mister Austin Richards the boss, "and none of us would ever buy Hillman Imp."

"What about Paula's Imps?" asked Barry, his son.

David Paul ran the local machine shop and was a motorcycle dealer. His grass track racing Imps were world famous in Cornwall.

"Paula's Imps?" exclaimed his father. "Paula's Imps! They're no more Hillman Imp than you are!"

"Look," said Andy the salesman, "I've got a lovely Peugeot 204 and you can have that for £500. Not only that, I'll give you -- give you -- a months guarantee on parts on the gearbox. I can't say fairer than that, can I?"

Actually, those were not his precise words but that's how they sounded to me.

Only Leonard, the body shop man, was not reduced to dangerous levels of apoplexy by the mention of the Hillman Imp.

"Bill Solway went on a course at the factory," he told me, "and he still didn't think there were any good."

But by then the deal had been done, even though I'd ask the vendor point blank if the car was a "ringer." This was trade slang for two wrecks cobbled together. I don't know why I asked him this because I didn't think I was a ringer. But, in the twinkling of an eye, he changed from being quite personable to extremely agitated. Fortunately, my mum smoothed things over. Subtlety was not one of my strong points back then.

Here's my Imp. It wasn't my first car - I think it was my fourth - but it was the first roadworthy one. Some things never change.

As soon as I got my Hillman Imp, I really began to learn about car mechanics. In this I was aided by a very good friend and neighbour, John Holland, who had worked at Solway's. He even gave me the remains of his old Mini van to weld into some of my other cars (see photo). And whenever I took a cylinder head to Dave Paull’s for machining, he would always ask, "How’s auntie?" because he lived next door to my Auntie Margaret in Zelah.

But when I went to Coventry Polytechnic, my Imp wasn't working again and remained off the road for two years until my industrial placement when I began to earn my first proper wages. By then, I also had access to a post office savings book and discovered that Talbot Special Tuning department in Whitley still sold Imp competition parts. I later discovered that the knowledgeable, friendly and avuncular chap behind the counter was none other than Tim Millington, who subsequently wrote the bible on tuning Imps.

By now, Chrysler had sold its European factories to Peugeot. I can remember thinking that this somehow didn't feel right. American owned firms like Ford and Vauxhall were okay but the French seemed so foreign and didn't even speak the same language. Looking back, it was a taste of things to come.

When it came to choosing a new big valve cylinder head, Mister Millington steered me towards a Wills ring head that Talbot Special Tuning had on special offer that week. Wills rings are hollow rings that fit into machine grooves in the cylinder head around each combustion chamber. They are gas filled so when the temperature increases the gas expands, increasing the sealing pressure when a conventional head gasket would be giving up the ghost. As at that time Talbot Special Tuning were discontinuing competition parts of the Imp, I was able to get a very good price for this special head.

Armed with many competition goodies and a decent radiator, my Imp blackened the highway again in 1985 with a 998 cc block, twin Stromberg carburettors and an R17 camshaft. I later joined the Imp club and bought some disc brakes for the front-end is the original drums were prone to fade. These discs were acquired for answering a for sale ad in the Imp Club mag too late.

"I'm afraid the ones advertised have gone," explained the vendor, "but I've got alloy racing ones that are available still, complete with new kingpins. I don't suppose you be interested in these would you?"

The resulting ensemble on lower Monte Carlo springs and good radial tyres was brilliant, although I missed hanging the tail out right, left and then right again when negotiating roundabouts on cross ply remoulds. The weight of the engine at the back could still make it little tail happy and I span it once or twice. The cross plies slipped more easily but gave far more warning of break away than the grippier radials. In the end, the brakes and handling proved so good I had also had problems from oil surge and the bottom end became very rumbling.

So I took the car off the road and turned it into a special. More about that some other time. Looking for a bigger, faster car without cooling problems (!) I bought a Triumph Dolomite Sprint, which I also still have. More about that another, other time.

I still have all go faster goodies as well as several Imps that they could fit with a little time and money but they're all off the road moment. Success in my self publishing ventures will see them darken the blacktop once again.

I remember well the light and direct steering, the superb handling, the slick gear change and the willing engine that always seemed to be on song. Because it was behind me, it always seemed to be urging me on, like a devil on my shoulder - an Imp indeed. Those disc brakes felt fantastic, too, and because I hadn't used the larger bore master cylinder used on Sport versions I never suffered from the front wheels locking up. And there was also the feeling, when pulling away from a filling station with a full tank, of driving an automotive hamster with its cheeks full of juice.

Even when without an Imp on the road, I've kept up my Imp Club membership because I've met so many like-minded individuals and made many friends as a result. Quite apart from the common enthusiasm for Imps, we shared many other interests and they're simply a brilliant bunch.

It has occurred to me that I ended up developing my Imp in ways that the factory should have done. When you buy a Hillman Imp, you begin a journey down the road of continuous improvement. These little cars have such potential -- it seems a shame not realise any of it.

After the painful experience of the Imp’s post-launch problems, I think the Rootes suits fell out of love with it. There were problems with the new factory as well as the warranty claims and the Rootes group lost a lot of money. The company was eventually driven into the arms of Chrysler, as the American corporation made a bid for globalisation.

Some people cite the reasons for this take over as the Imp’s poor sales and the logistical problems of having Linwood so far from the rest of Rootes’ manufacturing base in the West Midlands, but these were only part of the story. The Imp sales record wasn't actually that bad and the government had offered substantial financial incentives to build a factory in Scotland. I think the Rootes group suffered the same problems as BMC but, being that much smaller, they went under sooner. Both companies relied too heavily on the shrinking market that was the British Empire and didn't perceive the importance of selling their cars on the continent where production volume, build quality and innovation were freely embraced.

I'd love to know what the Americans made of the Imp. Did they write it off as their Rootes colleagues had? Did they fall in love with it again when they tried the competition only 998 cc version? Or did it look too much like the original Chevrolet Corvette, the rear-engined car that Ralph Nader vilified as "unsafe at any speed"?

They could have done so much for the Imp. All go better goodies of today -- 998 cc engines, disc brakes, bigger radiators -- where never available as production items. Rootes tried to maximise the return on its investment by offering some alternative body styles that included coupe, a van and an estate car but eventually resorted to various badge engineered variants like the Sunbeam Stiletto and Singer Chamois. Chrysler gave the range a minor facelift but this was really so that it could be built down to an even lower price. Holy writ from Detroit was "big cars, big profits" but just see where that big profits attitude has got them in 2009!

It strikes me that the Hillman Imp is the kind of Vintage Thing with which you enter a symbiotic relationship.

This is the deal. The Hillman Imp will turn you into a development engineer if you turn it into the car it always should've been.

So together you’re stronger.

To an offer like that, it would be just rude to say no.