Hillman Imp - The Poor Man's Porsche 911

Few cars recover from starting their production career with a bad reputation and the Imp was no exception. The unfortunate Hillman Imp was launched in 1963 and was one of those cars that soon picked up a bad reputation, in the Imp's case for overheating. Sales of the Hillman Imp were never what they could have been and its main competitor the Mini easily outsold it, even though many aficionados would say the Imp was actually the better car.

The overheating was sorted out, caused by a bad batch of thermostats, but compounded by the fact the Hillman Imp was one of the first cars to be made with an all aluminium engine. This required a different anti-freeze to the cast-iron engined cars of norm. A fact that not all garages seemed to be aware off leading to many Imp engines having the wrong kind of anti-freeze added which not only increased the chance of it overheating but caused internal damage to the engine as well.

Throw in the fact that due to financial problems at the time Chrysler, the owners of Hillman, required government funds to get the car into production, and the government insisted the new factory was built in Scotland where there was a high unemployment problem rather than in the Midlands where Hillman wanted it due to a large experienced workforce being available, unlike the Scottish employees who had no experience in auto manufacturing leading to quality control problems on early cars and you can see why the car was doomed from birth.

The sales of the Hillman Imp and its may variants never really recovered from those early days and all their problems. A great pity as it was a great little car and a good one today can be a source of fun, cheap motoring. The 875cc engine was based on the highly successful Coventry Climax racing engine and was notoriously tough being capable of revving to ten thousand rpm in competition. Not something I would ever recommend you try doing with a Mini engine.

The basic version of the engine only developed 39 bhp but the twin-carb versions gave 51 bhp and made for quite a nippy little car, quite able to hold its own with the early Mini Coopers.

The rear-engined Imp had the novel idea of an opening rear window to allow greater luggage space when the rear seat was folded flat to add to the front storage space.

The Hillman Imp came in three versions, the standard saloon, the Imp Californian which had a fast-back (a sloping rear window) to make it look more sporting, but which still only came with the single carb engine, and the Hillman Husky which was the boxy and surprisingly spacious estate car. Getting an early start on the badge engineering craze the Hillman Imp was also built as the Singer Chamois, in saloon only guise, as a posh version of the Imp and as the Sunbeam Imp in saloon style but with the twin-carb engine, and a Sunbeam Stiletto as the sporty twin-carb version of the Imp Californian.

One other model which is hard to pin down was the Hillman Imp Rallye. As far as I can see it was never a full production model or a model in its own right at all. It seems to have been a kit of parts that was supplied to specialist motor sport dealers in the Chrysler network to convert a basic Imp to Rallye spec for competition. The big change was that the 875cc engine was taken out to 998cc and twin Webber carburetors fitted boosting power to 65 bhp. It has to be said many cars received additional tuning by their owners to take the power much higher for both rallying and racing. There were also other after-market big-bore kits available to enlarge the capacity still further.

Back in the 1960s some one even created a twin cam head conversion for the Imp which on the 998cc version was putting out over 110 bhp in race spec. Not to shabby when a full race Mini 1000 could only manage about 95 bhp. Imps are still popular in historic race and rally events, even today.

A good, fast road engine in 998cc guise will deliver about 80 bhp.