Engine Punk

John called his series of specials Spenceley Specials. I really like the play on abbreviations for the SS JAG  (SS being the pre-war name for what became Jaguar) but he reckoned it just confused people!  In 2000, long before my first digital camera, I took some snaps of this machine at the Easter meeting at Tregrehan. The programme described it as a JAG but it didn't look like any Jaguar I knew. I was also intrigued by the SS JAG badge on the radiator. Sir William Lyons originally traded as SS before WW2 but adopted the name of Jaguar postwar for obvious reasons. Curiosity piqued, I thought it was worth taking some smudges of it. This is the same car at Wiscombe Park in 2008 but with a Riley 1496cc engine At the time this machine boasted a 2-litre Pinto engine but it subsequently turned up at Wiscombe Park in 2008 with a Riley 1496cc motor. I recently bought a superb book on RGS-Atlantas and was intrigued to find this car in it. It also appeared on a Facebook page for 50s and ...

This car is something of an enigma. Clearly an Imp Special Saloon, none of my Impish friends can identify what it is. It could be a Maguire Imp or a Davrian Imp but doesn't look quite like either. This is a very old photograph, taken at the same event where I first encountered Kermit (VT No. 101) That was at Tregrehan hillclimb in 1984 (I think). Was this speed hillclimb Imp a track refugee built by a known racing car specialist or purposely made at home to take to the hills? The photo is a little damaged as it was stuck to the back of another print and my patience in peeling it off gradually evaporated as I saw what was portrayed. I would say that it's been narrowed in the greenhouse area and has a centrally mounted single seat. There were many Imp Special Saloon 1000cc racers backalong and they were often pitted against Mini Special Saloons. Neither variety had much in common with production saloons and the formula was a delightful free-for-all. However, I thin...

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...

Stephen Cuff's Imp looked so good in black. Only in strong sunlight could you see that the front end was almost totally mesh for the rather - as it turned out - undersized radiator This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Hillman Imp and since I've had a long standing association with these under-rated little cars there will be one or two featuring on Engine Punk over the next few months. From a distance it looked like any other Imp This particular example is unfortunately no more. It was built to prove a BOBO (balls out, brain off) TVR Tuscan engine that reputedly put out 450bhp from its 4.5 litres. The Imp was pretty well filleted to take the drivetrain and Jag back axle so wasn't really a Hillman Imp at all but still - whoar! though eh? I regret asking what front suspension this thing used. Judging from the track and lack of room in the front (note the cut out for the air cleaners!) I'm pretty sure it wasn't Imp. I saw it at Tregrehan H...

Luigi looks all shiny and new here. Those front wheels were reputedly off a Ferrari. They were ultra-light but were sold off for some ridiculously high amount before Luigi came my way. Luigi is Kermit's younger Italian brother. If my memory serves me right it was 1987 when I stumbled over Luigi at Tregrehan. Luigi is low and I am not. This was the same place where I'd seen Kermit (VT No.101) a few years before and at the time I thought I'd found Kermit again but this device was obviously Alfasud powered and had a great slab of radiator sitting up front. I subsequently discovered that it was called Luigi and entirely new. Luigi embodied a few lessons learnt from campaigning Kermit. These included the use of a single rear wheel (albeit a spectacularly wide rear wheel) with a Citroen suspension sphere pressed into service on the home made box section swing arm. Not a brillinat photo but it's the only image I've got of Luigi (or Kermit for that matter) in ac...

Phil's wife it was who painted on those eyes I would like to say exactly when I first clapped eyes on Kermit - for it was indeed a momentous occasion - but I can be no more specific than Easter 1984 or Easter 1985. Or maybe Easter 1986. I can't honestly remember. The venue is in no doubt, though - Tregrehan Hillclimb near St Austell in Cornwall On that occasion there were bikes, cars and three-wheelers at the same event, which featured a very muddy paddock. The three-wheeler classes consisted of traditional asymmetrical sidecar outfits and symmetrical home made creations, often a triangluar frame extending backwards from the front subframe of some front-wheel-drive saloon, typically a Mini. Kermit as built was a stubby little fellow. It's now a lot sleeker to allow me to get in it. One of them was so obviously different in concept from the others and conspicuously supercharged that it held my interest as it came to the start line. This I subsequently came to k...