who knows imps?

I've been looking at Imps off and on for a couple years and think I will pick one up. Probably a weekend sometimes commuter and auto-xer. Anything in particular I should be looking for? Thanks!

I hear that feeding the little devils becomes costly...

What's an imp?

If you can find one, you'd probably do well to buy it. They're not easy to find for sale.

rust rust and rust. The enemy of Imps is rust. That said they are supercool and I want one badly.

I've been watching the same one for three years. I missed buying it at a garage sale of all things from the original owner. The new owner turned it up in his front yard for 5500 this week. He rebut the engine and gave it a decent paintjob. I wish he wouldn't have done any of that but rust free ones here are few and far between.

Sub-liter all alloy coventry climax motor, semi trailing rear and damn near swing axle front suspension.

A mega cool pop-out rear window is a bonus!

Perhaps you would have more responses on the Classic Motorsports board? We're pretty much 80's and up around here.

Maybe, but there have been more responses to this thread than there have been all day over there..

Most of the ones I've been checking out are $800 to $1400 but none of those are complete or they are very rusty.

Yeah, the rust problems on these cars was pretty famous. They were supposed to be sort of a rear-engined Mini. There are "Hillman" Imps and "Sunbeam" Imps....all built in the Rootes factory in Scotland.

I race very regularly with several guys who race Imp-powered Ginettas (see photo below). One of the guys , John, is a Brit ex-pat (living in Quebec) who seems to know a lot about these cars. I recentley asked him about the engines and their history.

And I asked him about the "connection" of the Imp engine to the Coventry-Climax engine. I've had lots of folks tell me they are 'the same", but they don't exactly look the same to me.

In fact, John told me that the two engines don't have a single, interchangeable part. The myth of their "identical" relationaship was because the fellows who designed the Imp and it's engine (Mike Parkes and Leo Kuzmicki ) were "inspired" by the Coventry-Climax engine and sought to create a newer engine with many of the same good features of the original little, aluminum firepump motor. Parkes, Kuzmicki and some others from Rootes were able to review the original engineering drawings of the Coventry-Climax. So in that sense one might say the Imp is "derived" from the firepump engine.

By the way, Mike Parkes is also well known as a former Ferrari driver (in both F1 and sports cars).

John also pointed out that when Rootes went bankrupt (during the time that Chrysler owned it) Peugeot bought off most of the Rootes inventory including the Imp engine tooling. He told me that Peugeot continued to build the Imp engine (for one of their small cars) until the late '90s, so there are still many inexpensive, spare parts for the Imp engines available via Peugeot. I had another guy later on tell me that the Peugeot did NOT do this, so it's hard to know who's right. Might be worth studying further.

~Click Here~ to see me following two of the Imp-powered cars two weeks ago at the Jeff-500. Slide to around 3:30 on the video. (we were crawling around because it was raining and we were the first group out, so lots of puddles and other unknowns)

An Imp is very near the top of my bucket list.

aeronca65t wrote: John also pointed out that when Rootes went bankrupt (during the time that Chrysler owned it) Peugeot bought off most of the Rootes inventory including the Imp engine tooling. He told me that Peugeot continued to build the Imp engine (for one of their small cars) until the late '90s, so there are still many inexpensive, spare parts for the Imp engines available via Peugeot. I had another guy later on tell me that the Peugeot did NOT do this, so it's hard to know who's right. Might be worth studying further.

IIRC there is one Peugeot engine with around a 1l capacity that's a further development of the Imp engine. My vague memory suggests that the block is stronger on these than the earlier engines and they fairly sought after as a basis for a hot Imp engine in the UK.

So yeah, from what I remember hanging around the classic car scene in the UK, the first person is correct.

Have you asked these guys also?

http://classicmotorsports.net/forum/

chandlerGTi wrote: Maybe, but there have been more responses to this thread than there have been all day over there.. Most of the ones I've been checking out are $800 to $1400 but none of those are complete or they are very rusty.

That's the rub. Without people asking questions there, there's not much to talk about. People come over here because there's an audience. I seriously think you'll get more information over there.

It will be much more awesome when GRM users can view the CMS board and vice versa without changing URLs. It's going to happen, even if it kills me.

Tom Heath wrote: .......It will be much more awesome when GRM users can view the CMS board and vice versa without changing URLs.........

YES!