Billy Meikle threw aside his Mini the moment he learned a Sunbeam Imp was up for grabs.
He’d not seen an Imp since arriving from Scotland in 1986. Nine years later, a friend in the British Saloon Car Club of Canada told him about an Imp for sale in Vineland – no motor, but tons of spare parts.
Meikle trucked the 1,275-cc Mini he’d been assembling – and a spare body shell to boot – to a willing buyer, Mr. Mini in Stoney Creek and towed the Imp home to Oshawa. He paid $500, or was it $600? Whatever, he had his prize.
His was just the reaction Rootes Motors had anticipated on a global scale when it introduced the Hillman Imp – Sunbeam Imp in export markets – in 1963, four years after rival British Motor Corp.’s Mini made its debut. Who’d want a Mini, Rootes’s strategists thought, when their new car’s rear engine afforded more cargo room?
The Imp held a lot more stuff – 12 cubic feet with the rear seat folded, unheard of in the day. The folding seat and a rear window that popped up for access were featured in the Rootes brochures as innovations in small-car design.
Consumers were underwhelmed. Initial sales were slow, becoming slower still as word spread of water-pump failures and shoddy workmanship. Rootes had bet the farm on its new factory at Linwood, Scotland, increasing to 100,000 Imps a year, but production topped 50,000 only once, in 1964. In financial despair, Rootes was acquired by Chrysler Europe in 1967. Sales figures quantify Imp vs Mini as no contest: Between 1963 and 1977, 440,032 Imps and related models were sold, against 5,387,862 Minis between 1959 and 2001.
Were there more Meikles in the market, things might have turned out differently. “It drives just like a Porsche, except it takes five minutes to get to 60 miles per hour,” he jokes as he offers his ’67 for a demo drive. In fact, Canada Track & Traffic magazine road tests reported the Imp hurtling to 60 mph in 22 seconds, against the Mini’s 24.3 seconds, when both cars were new. Today’s small cars take less than 10.
Stepping into the Imp does recall early Porsches: The front wheel wells consume so much footroom, the tiny pedals are offset to the right, so you find yourself sitting at an angle to the road.
Otherwise, the car feels surprisingly modern, if tiny: Meikle, a mechanic/plumber capable of restorations in his home garage, has fitted modern bucket seats and a thick-rimmed steering wheel. What a biddable little thing. It soaks up industrial-strength bumps on the outskirts of Oshawa despite the short wheelbase. The steering is light and precise. There’s no hint of tail-happiness, credit to its sophisticated rear suspension.
Gaining speed, the gearshift, too, turns out to be reminiscent of a Porsche 356, light and polite so long as you remember third gear is a long way over to the right of second. The pleasant humming of the engine from behind the rear seat is quieter than in the Imp’s bestselling competitor, the Volkswagen Beetle with its air-cooled egg-beater.
Still, why an Imp over a Mini? You can drift an Imp, Meikle says, referencing Irish racer Bill McGovern winning three consecutive British Saloon Car Championships from 1970-1972. In truth, sentiment played a larger role.
“Both my parents worked at Linwood making Imps. My old man was a tool-and-die maker, mom worked on the interiors,” he says. “They were there until Linwood shut down in 1981.
“Me and my pallies all drove Imps. I probably owned a dozen, you’d buy them cheap and drive them until their MOTs [annual road-worthiness certificates] expired. I’ve scrapped better ones than this one.”
He owns three, one a Hillman Husky variant, van-like with its raised roof. He’d buy a fourth, should a candidate become available. “Both my kids want Imps. Paisley already thinks the green one is hers,” he says of his 25-year-old daughter’s enthusiasm for the Imp we’ve just driven. “All those years of going to British car shows with me, and I have pictures of her helping me work on it when she was yay high.”
The gold one stored at his brother’s cottage, could be 20-year-old Crystal’s. The blue one – he refers to them all by colour – is the Husky he’s considering switching to a BMW motorcycle engine. As for a fourth, he has just been beaten to a 1968 Imp on offer in Thunder Bay.
Imps aren’t expensive. The asking price for the car at the Lakehead was $1,500 and Meikle intended on offering $900. Malcolm Anderson Imp Parts in Somerset, England, is an e-mail away: new, reliable water pumps are £135 ($219), or £75 reconditioned. Also on the web, imps4ever recounts such lore as Mike Parkes’s role in designing the Imp before Enzo Ferrari hired him as a race driver. The Imp Club, “Keeping the Imp Alive,” counts seven members in Canada, with Meikle serving as this country’s contact within the international organization.