This is my experience
of owning a Hillman Imp.
I purchased a brand new Hillman Imp
in 1969 which was then owned by Chrysler with some Australian
content. It was used as a first car, retired to a second car, and
then in 1979 put into storage for many years. In 2012 the Imp came
out of storage and is being restored for a club permit.
Like
all British cars, the quality and reliability were affected by poor
industrial relations. Quote from Top Gear on the demise of the
British motor industry: “The workers spent more time picking at
the gates than building cars”. Rootes Group (Hillman and Humber
cars) suffered from industrial action and they never recovered and
sold off or taken over by Chrysler. My next car was a
Japanese/Australian car (Datsun 1200) assembled in Port Melbourne
with Japanese and some Australian parts. The Japanese industrial
relations were different and workers were looked after resulting in
reliability and quality being so much better.
I am not union
bashing, I have been a union member. There needs to be a balance of
power between unions and management. If either side has too much
control then the outcomes are not good.
Good fuel economy and
uses Super petrol like most cars of the time. I could not use
Standard petrol due to the high compression ratio of 10:1. It needed
95/97 octane fuel. I got 36 to 44mpg ( 7.8 to 6.5L/100km). Being a
small car it used every space like the Mini.
No rust. It had
no mud traps on under-body so there was no structural rust. The car
spent a lot of time on dirt roads as our parents live 10km from the
sealed road. My car has only condense rust on one spot of the
bonnet.
The engine was reasonably easy to work on, but it
required a different technique. Kneel on foam at the back of the
engine, and say to it, be a good little Imp.
The exhaust
system was the most reliable part of the car. I consisted only of a
muffler that lasted the life of the car.
The car had an
Aluminium engine with a cast-in steel liner for the bore. The water
required a rust inhibitor. The small bolts on the engine required
only 6ft.lb torque which is only finger tight. This may have caused
problems, I used a torque wrench for all engine bolts. These issues
may have caused problems at the time.
The car suffered from
poor reliability, being the last made they used up all the rejected
parts. I had to replace the exhaust valve in the number 3 cylinder 3
times and only fixed the problem when I fitted another head from a
car I purchased for spare parts. I think the head casting had a
defect in the water jacket.
The gear lever entered the gearbox
at the bottom and the oil seal leaked out of the seal, a design
fault.
The 4-wheel independent suspension did not keep wheels
perpendicular to the road. This caused the inside tire to wear, tyre
rotation did not help. Tyre life was only fair, not good for economy
cars.
The engine had to be short to fit under the rear boot,
the engine was on a slant but it also had short connecting rods. The
short connecting rod made too big an angle with the bore, which put
too much side thrust on the bore, causing a short engine life.
Vectors will show this ( see below). For a given force 'F' the force
onto the bore 'A' is much greater. I put a rebuilt engine in at
40,000 miles (64,000km). A better design would be a water-cooled
beetle engine. The car was not driven hard, it was driven for the
economy as I did not have much money back in those days with a young
family. My next car was a Datsun 1200 and its motor did 150,000 miles
(240,000km) without the head being taken off.
To keep service
costs low they did not have grease nipples. The kingpins were
hard-chrome plated with Teflon-coated steel bushes. The steel
corroded under the chrome failing. When replaced I fitted grease
nipples, greasing pushes out the water and dirt.
When I
purchased the Hillman Imp a Renault R10 was also on the shortlist, it
would have been a much more reliable car. My experience with the Imp
taught me to become a motor mechanic and I have a historical car to
restore.
Vector
diagram showing high side force on the bore. With shorter connecting
rods the angle it makes to the bore the greater. This results in
greater force on the side walls (A). Therefore greater wear on the
bore, rings, and pistons.
This article was first published in the
Backfire: September 2018 (WDHVC) Revised 1/12/24