Vintage Thing No.134 - the Jemp

This is the official photograph of Jerry's Imp from the 1987 Land's End Trial. I am hidden by the screen but Jerry is driving and Mike Evason is bouncing furiously. I think this is Darracott - which we would've failed.

This is an ongoing project, one that my old mate Jerry Goater began and one that I hope I will get to a stage where it can be used again, for projects, like cars or motorbikes, are not finished off until they are destroyed utterly, when they have no further future. The Jemp rests in a corner of my garage, dry stored and awaiting its turn. It's not finished - it has a future.

It began as a standard Imp saloon in a sort of mustard grey colour and Jerry learnt to drive in it. It belonged to his parents. Sheila and Steve, but it sort of became his in 1985 when we were on our industrial placements.

Y'see, we were studying Industrial Design/Transport at Coventry Polytechnic and Jerry's dad was a CDT teacher and they had this grinder and this welder and by the end of that summer the Imp was a convertible.

Jerry and Geoff contemplate jerry's Imp before head gasket failure on a sunny Sunday afternoon in 1985. that's my Imp in the background.

Jerry was working at the Transport and Road Research Laboratory for his placement while I worked for John Mockett the motorcycle designer. I shared a house in Coventry with Geoff Bird another good friend who was working for Carbodies at the time and Jerry drove up to see us in his new creation, complete with tailor made tonneau cover.

The Jemp created quite a stir parked in Coventry City Centre on Saturday night. Looking back it seems somewhat miraculous it didn't attract the wrong sort of attention but when we came out of The Dog and Trumpet at the end of the evening we attracted an admiring crowd and the car was much fuller than it had been on the way there. I drove home as I didn't drink even back in those days and I noticed with surprise that it didn't have a temperature gauge, just a warning light, quite a big one but no match for a gauge.  It didn't light up so naturally we assumed all was well.

It wasn't. When Jerry migrated south to resume his gainful employment it blew the head gasket somewhere in the Banbury area if I recall correctly and his dad had to collect him with a tow rope. A rebuild soon followed but I don't remember it back on the road until after we'd graduated.

I don't know whose idea it was but by the time the three of us were working on GRP architectural statues for Piccadilly Jerry and I entered the Land's End Trial with another mate and fellow graduate form our course, Mike Evason. Geoff was also in the trial, passengering an old schoolfriend in a Chevette.

Well, we did everything wrong. We misread the instructions, couldn't cope with the twenty four clock - or even the two lots of twelve variety - soon gravitated to the utter tailmost of the running order and were classed as a non-finisher because we didn't appreciate that the volunteers running the show had to go home at some stage and wouldn't mind if we stopped off at my mum's for something to eat. We were starving!

Thanks to the chop top nature of Jerry's Imp, we were in Class 7 along with the big engined Beetles. We took this up with the scrutineers and the stewards but they said there was nothing they could do. We had altered the silhouette of the car and it was a special. We could either be in Class 7 or not in the trial.

We all took turns to drive, which is against the rules - there should be a nominated driver and passenger for insurance purposes I believe - and even had trouble with the route card, partly stemming from an inability to tell right from left, knife from fork or right from the other right.

Everywhere we went frightfully witty people said "Haven't you lost something?" (meaning our roof) before asking us what happened when it rained, to which we would reply that we got wet. Actually, we seemed to stay pretty dry. I think we cleared three hills but failed the rest. It was very much a learning experience. I remember one hill called Crossleigh, I believe. It had a Hillman Imp shaped hole and we fell into it so neatly that when this huge Massey Ferguson tractor bore down upon us to tow us up, its tyres could have trundled over our bonnet without anyone really noticing. I think he had to use his hydraulic arms to lift us out before pulling us. They don't use that hill anymore.

We entered the Jemp in the MCC's first Testing Trial at Mere

But we survived and so did Jerry's brave little car, even though it had no bash plate and the preparation beforehand had only been competition rotoflexes and a re-spray in Smoothrite yellow.

We enjoyed it so much that Jerry entered it again in 1988, this time with me and Gavin Cawood, another of our Coventry buddies. However, we burnt the clutch out trying to get off the line at Darracott and had to be brought home from North Cornwall by my mum in her Talbot Samba once we'd made our way to a pick up point on the A39..

Jerry came down again the following weekend with his dad and together they swapped the clutch in the open air at the foot of Gooseham Mill before attempting the hill again, this time with success.

"It's the same with a horse," they said, " if we hadn't attacked the hill again straight away after a refusal it wouldn't be able to face a hill again."

Big smiles from Jerry and Alison after the Testing Trial

Then Jerry decided to get serious.

Because of the silhouette thing, he decided he wanted to build an all out trials special for Class 8. He bought an Alfasud 1500 engine and gearbox - since he'd by now graduated to an Alfa Cloverleaf as his daily driver - and chopped the footprint of this powertrain out of the back of his Imp, cunningly squeezing it all around the Imp rear suspension. He made some hybrid driveshafts and hit upon a cunning plan to retain the inboard Alfa discs but keep the Imp rear shoes for a sort of fiddle brake, which probably would have seen us out of the trial no matter what class we were in.

It was while all this was going on that we spotted VT No.126,  that Alfa powered Imp at Tregrehan where a long talk

Jerry's home made driveshafts

However, that's as far as it got - so far. The rest of life overtook Jerry and his Imp and before long he was in an industrial design partnership with good old Geoff and working all the hours of the week plus some others few outside Gallifrey know about.

Eventually, his mum gave him an ultimatum and he said that if I wanted Jerry's Imp then could I please take it away. So I hired a truck and I did. Not much has happened to the Jemp since then but it's dry and safe for now. I think the Alfa engine had seized by the time I brought it home but I have a 1.7 litre 16 valve example kicking around and that definitely has not seized.

This isn't a great photo but it shows how Jerry set about fitting the Alfa engine and box. In the foreground is the new bulkhead that he put behind the front seats

Nowadays I refer to it as the Jemp, a contraction of Jerry's Imp and somewhere between an Imp and a Jeep. I don't fancy trialling it. Trials are too destructive for me. I reckon the Jemp would make a better fast road car. Jerry made it strong so I fancy lightening it a bit but single vehicle approval will be required because of that pesky chopped-about-monocque business again.

I don't think it'll happen any time soon but it I do find it taking up space sometimes and often the best way to have a clear up is to assemble the constituent parts.

One day the Jemp will ride again.