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J T Lord Boston Road Sleaford. A Rootes group garage window sticker on the rear window of a Hillman Imp
Photograph taken in April 1979.
The Imp with its 875cc ( some had a 998cc engine) rear mounted engine was produced from 1963 to 1976.
The car photographed here suffered the fate of most Imp's with corrosion on the cylinder head of the all aluminium engine, was repaired though. Pretty good performance and fuel economy and fun to drive.
The choke control lever was mounted on the floor behind the handbrake and the fuel filler was at the very front of the car under the boot lid, where the bonnet would normally be. A common unofficial mod was to carry a paving slab in the front boot to help improve front end handling. It did seem to work.
Photograph taken in April 1979.
Blue Hillman Imp - LMV 335K. Clydebank on 29 January 2012 saw the Glasgow start of the 15th Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique from the Clydebank College campus near to the area's famous Titan Crane. Along with the Monte-Carlo runners were the Caledonian Classic & Historic Motorsport Club (CCHMSC) Blythswood Heritage Run entrants. Other drivers of classic vehicles brought their cars to the area too, adding to the atmosphere.
A car who's name lives in British motoring infamy, a small and subtle little machine that was meant to take on the Mini, but went on to kill the Scottish Motor Industry.
The Hillman Imp was meant to be the company's great white hope, entering production in 1963 after millions of pounds of investment, including the construction of a new factory at Linwood near Glasgow.
However, Hillman were impatient to get their car into the showrooms, and although there was a huge opening ceremony at the Linwood Factory featuring an appearance by HRH Prince Philip, Hillman had cut some corners. The Prince was only shown certain parts of the factory as most areas had not been finished, and the selection of seven cars he and his entourage were driven round in were in fact the only seven cars that would work properly.
The rest of the cars being produced were tested exhaustively by drivers hired in from the local population, basically driven until the cars wouldn't run any more, but the distances between breakdowns were very short, some being as low as 30 miles.
Nevertheless the car was produced at the Linwood factory, which employed 6,000 people from one of the most impoverished areas of Scotland. All seemed well, until the sales numbers came in, which showed the initial problems had damaged the car's reputation and thus resulted in it never selling the the estimated numbers. This was added to by heavy industrial action carried out by the workforce, which resulted in the factory only working at a third the capacity and suffering from many stoppages.
Because of this, the Hillman brand began to suffer, and although cars such as the Avenger, the company folded in 1976, the factory being taken over by Peugeot-Talbot. The factory continued on until 1981 and quickly demolished, resulting in high unemployment that even to this day struggles to recover.
The Hillman Imp is a compact, rear-engined saloon car that was manufactured under the Hillman marque by the Rootes Group (later Chrysler Europe) from 1963 to 1976.
At about half the height of a chub frame the diminutive IMPS (Intelligent machine power suits) were designed for rapid response, lightly armed they know better than to go toe to toe mano a mano, but as their diminutive size makes them hard to hit (+1blue dice) and their ability to scamper under and over terrain inaccessible to other frames(+1 green) they excel in taking lightly defended positions and in a pack can prove deadly with their fusion cutting torches making quick work of enemies ambulatory systems
dear friends!! it is hard for me to find the poetry on flickr these days... but i am not leaving. instead, i am spreading my wings and exploring the poetry of other realms. if you are on imperity, you can find me there... www.ipernity.com/home/286573
i will look for you near the teahouse*
may all travelers find joy!!
jeanne
Added to brighten up the old boarded up Boots store in the High Street.
It relates the old legend of the Lincoln Imp. flic.kr/p/kmAEsq
The artists were James Mayles and Luke St Clair-Pedroza.