Improving the Imp
It was interesting to read the Roger Nathan article in the August issue. I knew him in the mid-’60s, when I was a sales engineer for Klingers, involved in gaskets for industry. I was also engaged in VSCC racing and had started playing with cars at the age of 15, converting an Austin Seven saloon into a sports car. I called on Roger in Brixton, and in those days I could get development gaskets made in the works through my contacts in the factory.
At that time I was in contact with Paul Emery, who also had Imp head-gasket problems. I made him samples, too, and remember saying to him that his engine at its biggest bore looked like an upturned tray with four opened baked bean tins!
I was later headhunted by Reinz in Germany to look after its UK business, and when I called on the production engineering side of Rootes at Whitley, I was pulled into Leo Kuzmicki’s office. The Imp was still having trouble, which no-one was able to solve, so I flew to Stuttgart with a block wrapped in brown paper, plus a cylinder head and the bolts in my pocket, to get some load tests done at Reinz’s factory in Ulm. The outcome was a very good gasket design, which saved this engine – we started with an order for 60,000 to resolve the problem in existing cars. I saved the last of them for The Imp Club to use when supplies ran out.
Those were happy days: design developments depended on goodthinking engineers, not computers. Mike Head
Otford, Kent