Vintage Thing No.39 - the Gillie
Continuing the occasional theme of Hillman Imp off-road thingies, this device is probably the ultimate. The Gillie was designed around 1970 by the Rootes group and endowed with hub reduction gearing and a shorter wheelbase. This combination gave it exceptional off road performance but made it a bit slow on the road. It also hadn't been consciously styled by the Rootes Group stylists so had a kind of honest-to-goodness lack or pretension. This photo is from a newspaper article supplied by Gary Henderson via Franka's excellent site. You can read more about the genesis of the Gillie here. The Gillie never went into production and remained unique. After a brief period on Lord Rootes' country estate, the one-and-only Gillie fell into obscurity. There were tantalising gl imp ses of it by Imp aficionados from time to time but it led a secret existence unrecognised for many years until recently, when it turned up - like so many things - on Ebay. And by now you'd never beli...