Engine Punk

Jack Turner who drew up the body for the Turner Imp This is a Vintage Thing that nearly reached production but didn't. I recently came across an Imp derived car that I’d never heard of. I wasn’t expecting to find one, either, because I was reading Turner Sports Cars by Peter Tuthill. These were sports racing cars of the traditional British front engine/rear wheel drive variety. In fact the Turner 803 was probably what spurred BMC to produce the Austin–Healey Sprite. Unfortunately, the rear-engined Turner sports car never got built. The illness of the company’s founder, Jack Turner, brought about the voluntary liquidation of the company in 1966. By that stage Jack had drawn up an attractive little car with a Kamm tail and what looks like a front mounted radiator. Jack was a personal friend of Wally Hassan the Coventry Climax development engineer. Many competition Turners featured Coventry-Climax 1216cc engines so Jack would have been more than familiar with the Imp engine’s...