FIRST LOVE

Thanks for the consistently high quality of your magazine, which I await with eagerness each month.

The article on the Hillman Imp a while ago stirred up some fine memories of this underrated compact car. The Imp had been below my radar as a young lad who was more tempted by the trendy celebrity of the Mini. Yet a test drive in a locally-advertised C-reg 1965 Super Imp selling for £130 (this was 1973) revealed it was nippy, cornered on rails, had a top speed of 90mph and fuel consumption of 40-45mpg. I was won over and parted with the cash, equivalent to two month’s take-home pay.

My joy was unconfined, until someone said to me: 'Isn’t that Liz’s old Imp? Did she have trouble with that!' I then embarked on a steep learning curve involving engine overheating, failed cylinder head gaskets and a holed exhaust which caused smoke to enter the car’s interior, almost asphyxiating my sister-in-law. One novel aspect of the car was the folding rear seat which made its presence felt during my driving test – on the emergency stop the seat collapsed, striking the examiner in the back and propelling him into the windscreen. I still passed the test.

During two years of less than troublefree ownership the Imp won me over with its undoubted qualities, but the end of our relationship was swift and brutal. Leaving London bound for Wales on the A4, the car started belching fumes on the approach to the Hammersmith elevated section. A quick detour to a garage on the Fulham Palace Road led to an offer of £10 scrap value for the Imp, which I duly accepted.

The Imp was a great overall package, but bedevilled by poor labour relations and by maddening cooling problems. It went on sale effectively with the customer having to tackle the issues, not an unknown factor in British motoring history of the 1960s and ’70s. According to my reference books only 440,000 Imps sold compared to 5.3 million of the original Mini. There’s no justice.

Roger Bowen