Vintage Thing No.139 - Raven 4WD
You may well stare in wonder Pete - you're looking at the interesting side Pete Low and I spotted this little beauty in the paddock at Wiscombe Park hillclimb in 2014. There was no-one to ask when I spotted it and I've been trying to find out more about since then but to no avail. Regular readers of Engine Punk may remember the Imp-powered Vixen single seater that sent me into raptures some time ago so it was inevitable that I should be drawn to the site of an upside down Imp gearbox again. It's just a Hillman Imp gearbox, there's nothing to see here, move along now The vehicle in question was clearly labelled a Raven but despite being pretty well up on Imp lore this didn't ring any bells with me. The inverted Imp gearbox enables the mid-engined layout and is often used with Imp engines as in the Vixen. But the Raven had a 1600 Ford crossflow lump in it - so it must be quite a well-built box, then, with an engine almost twice the size of yer ordinary Imp....