RACY HILLMAN JOINS THE TEAM
I don’t remember this being mentioned as part of a return to the office plan, but here we are. After the doors were generally reopened at C&SC towers in November, I was sitting at my desk with sister mag Autocar when colleagues started talking about Hillmans. My family had a Hunter when I was a kid, and you never see those, do you?
So I opened the classifieds and began searching for Hillmans. Sure enough, no Hunters. But there were a couple of Imps, and I’ve always had a soft spot for Imps. Five minutes later I was on the phone to the Welsh owner of this 1965 model, which puts it around the middle of the 1963-’67 MkI run.
It had been modified for rallying and did some historic events in the early 2000s, but was then parked up until it was rescued by said current owner and put through an extensive restoration of the kind I like: mechanically comprehensive, but cosmetically left usable. I wasn’t very far into the conversation when I had rather convinced myself that I was going to buy it.
Three days later I went to see it. In the ad, a small bunch of spares was pictured alongside but that didn’t really tell the whole story. It would come with a spare (MkII) engine that had been rebuilt, but not run, by the owner’s nephew as a lockdown project, plus several other major engine components, gearboxes, carburettors, two additional sets of rims (11in steels and 13in slot-mags – the latter are available if you’re interested), some gauges, clips, pipes, radiators, pumps… If I had a spare rolling chassis, I could almost make a full running car out of the parts. One task is to produce an inventory and sell the things I’ll never need.
The whole lot was offered at £5000, which I think is terrific value – particularly so if you see the prices of comparable Minis – and that’s before we even mention the value of the spare parts.
The car hadn’t really been run properly since its 2017 restoration and I’m only slightly embarrassed to report that it hasn’t run much since I brought it home, either.
I stuck a little petrol in the tank and set about it. Given a charged battery, some carb and fuel-pump cleaning, and application of a rubber hammer to the starter motor, it came to life. Which is when I learnt that a length of bent tube to put on the tiny exhaust – which otherwise leaves me standing in a cloud of fumes while I’m firing it up – is essential.
It ran, but not very cleanly. Still, in my neighbour’s lane it
