Hillman Imp with more than a little devil

Meet the Hillman Imp that thinks it’s a Lamborghini Miura.

A mid-mounted Italian engine, hinged front and rear clamshell, ribbed bucket seats, and a throaty exhaust note – it’s a world away from the British supermini built west of Glasgow.

Owner John Fox, a former Lotus employee who later spent years restoring Miuras, took his inspiration from the thoroughbred supercar when he decided to restore the Imp that he first bought way back in 1978.

“I had an engine from an Alfasud, and the Imp, and I thought the two would go together well,” he says. “I thought the Alfa engine would sit nicely in the back of that in a mid-engine position – but how am I going to do it? Well, the Miura’s we were working on are mid-engine, so I basically thought I’d copy the way the engine is fitted to that.

“The rear subframe bits are pretty much a copy of the Miura bits. We had all the patterns – so I replicated it but obviously cut them down to the right length.”

Imp like no other

The result is an Imp like no other, a British street racer with an Italian heart.

But John, 70, has one major regret about the rebuild he mostly completed during the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 – that his late wife Wendy never got to see the car on the road.

Wendy died in April 2020, and the car is dedicated to her memory, with her photograph adorning the passenger door and dashboard.

“The only disappointing thing is that Wendy is not here to ride around with me in it,” says John. “She was into it. She probably got a bit fed up because I spent too much time on it, but she was enthusiastic for me to get it done and use it for what we wanted to use it for, but obviously that never happened.”

We’re chatting in John’s home in a south Norfolk village – he was born in the house next door – and he remembers first getting on the road on a Honda 90 to get to work and back, a record shop in Thetford.

He passed his driving test at 17 and bought a Mini Traveller, the first of several Minis he’s owned and invariably tinkered with.

READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH

A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.

First year of the Imp

In 1978 he bought the Imp, an early model manufactured in 1963, the car’s first year of production.

The Hillman was notable for several reasons: it was the first mass-produced British car with the engine in the back, with the block and head cast in aluminium, and with a diaphragm spring clutch.

It also featured a unique opening rear window, a folding rear bench seat, automatic choke, and gauges for temperature, voltage and oil pressure.

“I had never particularly liked Imps, but somehow or other I ended up with one,” smiles John. “I really can’t remember why I bought it – I must have been in need of a car. I paid…not much!

“I actually liked it, it was a good little car. But as happened to all of them it probably overheated or something, or blew a head gasket. Instead of repairing it I just drove it home and it went in the barn across the road, which belonged to my grandfather.

Stored and forgotten

“It’s a wonder I didn’t scrap it really. I think it just got put in there and forgotten about.”

That was in 1979, when John was working for the Jim Russell Racing Driver School at Snetterton, which followed a stint at nearby Lotus Cars.

After a spell as a driving instructor (Wendy was a successful student), he went to work for Chris Lawrence at Wymondham Engineering, restoring Ferrari GTOs and GTEs and, later, Miuras.

“One day, someone who had bought one of the GTOs had also got a Miura which was in quite bad condition, so he asked Chris if he could do anything with it,” says John.

“We used it to take measurements and get patterns, so we rebuilt that and kept all the patterns. He knew a few other people who had got Miuras, so we rebuilt some tubs.”

After Lawrence’s death in 2006, John switched to working for Martin Collier, carrying on the Miura work at Old Buckenham airfield.

Throughout all this, the Imp languished in his grandfather’s barn, alongside the Alfasud engine and some pattern Miura sills.

81.5% of customers could get a cheaper quote over the phone

Protect your car with tailor-made classic car insurance, including agreed value cover and discounts for limited mileage and owners club discounts

swoosh-green.png

Rotten Alfasud

“I had a 1972 Alfasud in the late ‘80s and, like most of them, it rotted away,” says John. “Nowadays, I’d have kept it and restored it, but at the time I wasn’t into bodywork.

“I took the engine and running gear out of it and the rest of it got scrapped. I kept the engine because it was an Alfa, and I couldn’t bring myself to scrap an Alfa engine.”

When his grandfather died, the land and the barn was sold in 2016, and John had to haul his belongings over the road to his own garage – and that’s when his dream of a street-racer Imp took hold.

“It was here for a while before I thought, ‘well I’ve got the Alfa bits and the Imp, I think they’d go together quite well’, so I started chopping it up and it all fell into place,” says John. “As I was cutting bits out of it, the steel was in good condition.

“It could have been restored to an original Imp, but it wasn’t what I wanted and I don’t think they make an awful lot of money. I thought ‘if I’m going to do it I’ll do what I think I’ll like’ – I was more into race type cars than road cars.

Road legal racer

“It’s something I always wanted to do. I always wanted to make one that was pretty much a race car but road legal. And that’s what I’ve done with that.”

After working on the car for a few hours each week, things changed when the government put the country into lockdown in March 2020 and John could no longer go to work.

When Wendy succumbed to cancer the following month, John threw himself into the Imp’s resurrection, working on the car pretty much full time.

He cut away much of the front and rear sections of the Imp, leaving the roof and centre section intact and constructing new front and rear bulkheads.

The original Coventry Climax 875cc engine was replaced by the larger 1490cc Alfa unit, and moved into a mid-engined position with the removal of the rear seats.

John moved the radiator to the front, again aping the Lamborghini, with an electric pump pushing water through tubes running inside a pair of Miura inner sills cut down to fit.

READ MORE ABOUT SOME OF OUR GREATEST CLASSIC CARS WITH

A series of articles on our Cult Classics site.

Imp modifications

Other changes include disc brakes all round (the front from Rally Design, the rear discs from a Fiesta and the calipers from a Fiat); adjustable GAZ shocks; homemade front wishbones; a new steering rack; stiffened outer sills; and heavily modified doors, wings, bonnet and boot, with liberal use of aluminium.

Inside, John stripped out the dashboard – “I made it up as I went along” – with a pair of bucket seats made from scratch out of MDF.

“Because of those extra Miura sills, I had problems finding off-the-shelf seats that were narrow enough, so I gave up in the end and knocked something up,” he says. “I had to find a way of doing it where sewing wasn’t involved! I did the roll type thing which, again, is sort of copying the Miura, using pipe lagging cut in half, foam and MDF. They need changing though – they’re not very comfortable! Eventually I’ll find seats that will fit.”

All in all, John reckons the rebuild cost about £5,000.

“The money goes when you start buying shock absorbers, disc brakes and that kind of thing, but the actual fabrication work costs next to nothing,” he says.

42 years later…

The Imp was finally back on the road in July 2021, 42 years after it last turned a wheel.

“I was pleasantly surprised,” says John, who had the car MoTd even though it didn’t legally need it. “I just wanted to get someone to have a good look around it, but it went through fine.

“I thought everything would be really rattly – there’s no sound deadening at all. It is very noisy but the suspension and body panels didn’t rattle much.

“There’s no flex in the body whatsoever, no body roll, and the handling is very good. It’s great fun to drive, but I wouldn’t say it’s a car you’d want to drive a long distance in.

“I just turn my hearing aids down…”

By modern standards, the Alfa engine is not particularly powerful, but the Imp was already small and light even before much of the steel was replaced with aluminium.

“I’m more than happy with the performance,” says John, who has a tin Imp sign in his porch as if to remind himself what it used to look like.

“A bit of fun”

“I don’t know what the Hillman Imp owners club would think – they’d probably be quite upset. But if you’re going to spend a lot of time on it, it’s got to be what you want. If you can’t have a bit of fun, it’s not worth doing.”

He admits to getting some puzzled looks when he takes the car out.

“I get most of my bits from Wilco motor parts, and when I come out there are usually people looking round it and wanting to know all about it,” he says. “The older people tend to know what it is, but the younger ones haven’t got a clue. Overall, it’s a good reaction, but also a lot of strange looks.”

The matt black finish with Monster green trim was a colour scheme chosen in collaboration with Wendy, and John stuck to the plan, experimenting with rattle cans.

“She wanted it to look badass,” he smiles. “I’d like to tidy up the paintwork but don’t think it’ll be a smart, plush paint job. I don’t think I’ll ever have it painted properly – it’s a lot of money.

It’s not a show car”

“It’s a car I want to use. It’s not a show car and no way was it ever meant to be.”

It was, of course, meant to be a car that John and Wendy could drive around the country lanes, and even hit the racetrack at Snetterton.

“The original intention was to do some track days,” he says. “We both spent quite a bit of time up at Snetterton for cars and bikes, often going up to watch the track days and having some dinner.”

Understandably, John’s enthusiasm for driving the car dimmed a little, but two of his three sons  – Iain and Paul – now have VW Beetles, and he’s looking forward to joining them on drives out.

“They took an interest in the rebuild, and hopefully I’ll use it a bit more now they’ve got the Beetles on the road,” he says, vowing never to sell the Imp that has undergone a startling metamorphosis.

“I wouldn’t sell it, no,” he says. “It’s always in the back of my mind that someone would buy it, go a bit silly in it and hurt themselves. I’d rather just keep it and use it myself. When I’m gone, if it’s still around, the boys will do something with it…”

Read more articles