Engine Punk

The Alfa badge caught our eye Here we have another Imp spotted at Tregrehan, this time in the late 1980s. This is how I always remember the paddock at Tregrehan. Muddy. It had plenty of cooling holes, retained the handy rear hatch for loads (engine access as it turned out) but rear arches of questionable aesthetics This Imp had an Alfasud engine and gearbox mounted behind the rear seats. My mate Jerry (that's him with the carrier bag in the photo) was in the process of building something similar (more on that another time) and spotted the little Alfa badge on the front, put two and two together and went to ask some well-informed questions. As so often happens on these occasions the answers were remarkably forthcoming considering it was a competition car under developing but - hey! - that's hillclimbing chaps for you. Look at those Rotoflexes! We were particularly interested to see that the Imp rear suspension had been retained and that standard Rotofles co...

Imps by name and Imps by nature, these small cars look so mischievous If we had a republic in Britain the Hillman Imp might have had a better start in life. Its launch was rushed so that Prince Philip could visit production under way at the new showcase factory at Linwood in Scotland. It wasn't really his Royal Highness' fault that the Imp was not adequately developed. In fact, if we'd been a republic and suits at Rootes would probably have got the President of Britain in on the same date. As it was, the Imps soon developed a poor reputation for fertility and unreliability. I can remember, as a car mad tax of about six or seven, being shown in him by my father at our local garage. This was Solway’s, now the Town & Country Nissan dealer at Marazanvose on the A30. "That," he told me, "is the worst car ever made." He'd just been talking to the mechanics of getting our Anglia serviced. Roll forward to the summer of 1981. I’d had my drivin...

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...

It was a dark and stormy night at The Borough Arms on the road between Wadebridge and Bodmin. There were precious few travellers on the roads that evening and we had the usually popular hostelry pretty much to ourselves. There was just me and my friends and fellow members of the Imp Club, John and Sarah Doughty. Outside, the rain beat at the windows, the wind moaned in the chimney and the pub sign rattled on its chains but inside it was warm and welcoming. The fires were lit and after our meal we pulled up the armchairs in a semi-circle and gathered round the hearth. And, as might only be expected on a night such as this, talk soon turned to the subject of the supernatural. I happened to remark that I had never heard of a car being haunted. There have been ghost trains and phantom trucks and cars, I said, and I had even heard of a headless cyclist. But while accounts of ghostly cars have often been told, I had never heard of a real car being haunted as a house or a ship might be....

Some black and white publicity photos of the Siva Llama turned up on eBay a few weeks ago. I watched them after being tipped off about them by Graeme Pearson the editor of the Imp Club magazine. I didn't bid but they've found a good home though because they now appear on Franka's site. The registration of the car depicted is a new one on me. I have a short list of known cars and hope that this one is an unknown survivor. There's something that inspires camaraderie between the owners of obscure motor cars. At the ARCC (Association of Rootes Car Clubs) Rally at Blenheim Palace in 2000, I met an affable chap from the Clan Crusader owners club called Jim McEwan. I was attending with my Siva Llama at that particular show and he was fascinated by it. Jim was the club historian for the Clan Crusaders and we had a long and enthusiastic talk. Over the next 18 months or so, he sent me a number of articles that featured a Siva Llama. These weren't just photocopies -- th...

I still can't understand why these guys aren't major league stars, The Hellacopters rock - they really rock - but for now they're calling it quite and going on to other things. I've never seen them live so now I never will but there are many great songs on my iPod that wouldn't exist if it were not for them. I discovered The Hellacopters by accident. Actually, it was terrorist action. I'd ordered The Flaming Sideburns first album from Amazon but amid all the confusion in London during the tube bombings was sent a compilation from the same record company with a serial number just one digit different. I rang them up and the guy said, "We'll send you the proper album gratis. We've just had some very strange days up here." So thanks to Al-Queada, I got Pushing Scandinavian Rock to the Man. That must mean me, then. The Flaming Sideburns had one song but The Hellacopters had two. At first I thought they were awful but it wasn't long before ...

As I sift the ether for brand new musical biscuits, I come across a lot of rubbish. Forget Myspace or YouTube - I found this little gem via the Hillman Imp Club website. Over the years I've had many fascinating musical discussions around car show camp fires up and down the country and the odd thing about the Imp Club members - apart from a weakness for space hopper sumo wrestling (or is that a strength? Discuss) - is how similar our tastes in music seem to be. I've been introduced to a number of rare grooves by its members and sometimes a guitar has magically appeared. At one show, a Beer Powered Noise Frenzy broke out but I missed it. I knew one of my fellow Imp-o-philliacs, Tim Morgan, was a guitar hero and an innocent enquiry on the Imp site discussion forum about how he was getting on led to me discovering The Scopies . Okay, a trip to their page on Myspace was involved but that's okay because here I was introduced to their track "I wanna be a Ramone." ...

The Imp Club like it. All I have to do is repeat this reaction with Wolseley owners and the 2CVGB. My books have received a shameless plug in the latest edition of Impressions, the award winning magazine of the Hillman Imp Club, headed Stop Press. Over the years, I've contributed a few articles to Impressions and Grahame Pearson the editor said "Members familiar with Bob's style of writing will know it will be a good read. His next book, The Wormton Lamb, will be out around Easter and will feature Hillman Imps, which Bob insists are not gratuitous classic car placements but actually germane to the plot." The Imp Club magazine may not sound like the Times Literary Supplement but it's aimed at just the kind of people I want to connect with - pistonhead hedonists and hedonistas. Hmm. Could be a new word that - pistonhedonist! You saw it here first, folks, if Wikipedia comes looking. Imp club members come from many walks of life, sections of society and diff...