Vintage Thing No.57 - Little Jim (grandfather to the Hillman Imp))

Could this car inspire the affection the much later Hillman Imp received?

Who was Little Jim?

Whilst rummaging around in the Boogie Wundaland archives, searching for something that was very important at the time, I found a very old photocopy from a book entitled Cars That Got Away. This had covered the genesis, amongst others, of the Hillman Imp, so it mentioned Apex and The Slug, but went back even further to tell the story of Little Jim.

The origins of the Hillman Imp can be traced back far beyond its introduction in 1963.

To pursue a Biblical analogy, the Imp was begat by Apex, which was begat by The Slug. But it seems that The Slug was begat by Little Jim. That would make him the Imp’s great grandfather.

Before the Second World War, the Rootes group differed from the other industry giants because it did not have a very small car as the foundation for its range. People who buy small cars are often regarded by manufacturers as likely to trade up to a larger car at a later stage. Not having a small car in your range means that they have to cut their motoring teeth on a competitor’s product and it is considered more difficult to woo them away from that make later on. Just like your first love never really dies.

The Henshaws ably make their point in their book on the Imp, Apex - The inside story of the Hillman Imp, which I would recommend to anyone.

A bank manager might have a Humber, and his senior clerks might have Hillman Minxes, but junior clerks bought Austin 7s and Morris Minors in droves – or whatever collective noun you get bank clerks in. (Ledgers of bank clerks, perhaps? No. St Ledger is the patron saint of turf accountants. A statement - or an overdraft - of bank clerks? Hmmm. What about a letter-for-which-you-will-be-charged-for of bank clerks?)

Conscious of the plight of bank clerk’s throughout the British Empire, Rootes initiated a design study and built a prototype in 1938. This was soon christened Little Jim in a perfect example of “Small Car? Say ‘Aaaah!’” syndrome.

This is a photocopy of a photo but you get the idea.

Little Jim had a 750cc water-cooled engine mounted in the front with rear wheel drive. It is not clear how many cylinders he had but it was probably four and the valves would certainly have lived in the block. Consequently he would have had absolutely no sporting pretensions whatsoever. He was very small and nearly a foot narrower than a Hillman Imp. Interior space was almost adequate because he was quite tall, thereby anticipating small cars of the twenty-first century – or is it that modern designs are simply old fashioned? His overall appearance resembled a Standard Flying 8, which was an attractive streamlined little car of the period, with an obvious American influence. It would probably have appealed to the “please make funds available” brigade but the war intervened and what would have been a perfect Private Pike mobile never saw the light of day. As the unrecorded author of Cars That Got Away put it, “It would have been a conventional try at a conventional car and, as such, its loss is not so very great.”

Anyway, Little Jim contributed little to the development of the Hillman Imp. He gets a mention in the Henshaw's book but in that account he was a rear engined little beast designed after the war by Craig Miller. Powered by a VW derived twin cylinder engine, this version of Little Jim was intended to address post war petrol rationing but, again, did not progress beyond the prototype stage. Perhaps exporting proper-sized cars was a better strategy.

Dp any pictures of a completed Little Jim exist?

In the event, it took a lot more development to evolve a serious proposal and junior bank clerks have been rejoicing ever since.