Photography and Story by John Webber
The car show crowd gathers around the tiny roadster and speculates. It looks vaguely Italian, but a TVR emblem graces the front, and its engine sits in the rear.
A TVR? Really?
Most spectators are stumped, but that’s understandable. It’s TVR’s one-and-only Tina Spyder, and she’s back in action after a decades-long restoration.
For more …
The Imp had a good a feature and a bad one. The good one was a Climax designed SOHC 875 cc engine derived from a water pump engine of even smaller displacement. The bad one was the whole suspensions, swing arms and all. I have owned three of these little beasts, two Sunbeam and one RHD Hillman. If you had put a decent suspension under them and the rally Imp 998 cc engine, you would have had a viable alternative to the Fiat 850. As it was, the TVR Tina kept the bad parts and added styling arguaby inferior to the original Imp.
Not a winning combination.
The Hillman Imp engine was not designed by Climax, it was designed by Peter Ware, Leo Kuzmicki and Craig Miller who all worked for the Rootes Group.
After various design requirements for the Hillman Imp were settled, a number of small engines were studied and compared to these requirements. One of these engines was the Coventry Climax 750cc engine. Rootes already had close relationships with Coventry Climax and after close analysis, found that many of the features of the Climax engine coincided with the Rootes requirements. This, combined with the existing relationships, allowed Rootes to design and develop a new engine using extremely valuable advice and help from Coventry Climax, but this was a Rootes designed engine.
The Hillman Imp was launched in 1963 and by 1964 (by popular demand) Rootes launched a homologation special called the Rally Imp. In 1965 they managed to secure 1st and 2nd overall in the Tulip Rally, they were also campaigned successfully in motor racing, particularly the British Touring Car Championship which was won by an Imp in 1970, 1971, and 1972 - seems the suspension, "swing arms and all" worked out OK for these guys.
Rootes developed a wide range of models based on the original design of the Hillman Imp - at least 20 Variants, all with very different styling. Your comments with regard to the TVR Tina which "kept the bad parts" shows a certain level of ignorance - when the car was shown at various world car expo's, it drew huge crowds that loved the little car, it also garnered acclaim from the motoring press, and many potential buyers placed deposits at the shows. You may not like the car but I would suggest that you are in the minority and don't seem to know much about it.
Are you suggesting that the Imp suspension wasn't...challenging?
I have to go by what a friend who raced them in England back in the day has told me. He switched to a space frame Imp powered car in frustration. I defer to you on how much of the engines were Climax and how much elaborated upon by Rootes.
I was probably one of the few who ever bought an Imp new from the dealers in Canada - they weren't good sellers here. They wre marketed beside the Alpine (by then a rebadged Rapier) that also languished on the sales floor.
As the UK owner of 6 or 7 imps in the dim and distant past,starting with a very early 1964 Mk1 with a vacuum throttle,several Singer Chamois, Sunbeam Sports models and a brand new Sport which was driven out of the showroom in 1973 straight onto a ferry and across Europe to what was then Yugoslavia. We had a local tuning firm near Brands Hatch racing circuit which could provide shortened and up rated springs which were so simple to fit .Adding insult to injury also fitted a 1040 cc engine with Wills rings to one car . Owned a couple of Ginetta G15 based on the imp engine. Never ever found the suspension to be a problem, did get very good at changing headgaskets though.
Remember when the track at Brands Hatch could have a Imp and a Ford Falcon fighting it out with the Minis trailing behind.
I think the list of owners has a gap! My brother owned this very car sometime in the '70's in England but I can't say for sure just when. I live in the US but was visiting one summer and have photos of it. By rhe way, the interior was white at that time. I drove if for an hour or two and remember it oversteered very easily! Almost ended it's life on one corner.
If you squint just slightly, you can see Corvair Spyder.........
oldgit said:Owned a couple of Ginetta G15 based on the imp engine. Never ever found the suspension to be a problem,
Not surprising as IIRC the G15 didn't use Imp front suspension, it used the ubiquitous and very decent Triumph Herald front end as did my old race car, a TVR Grantura Mk 3 and many small sports racers.
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