OPINION
John follows the resto of a prototype Imp transmission
Car manufacturers travel many blind alleys before finding a through-route to sales success. Their failed experiments can make for fascinating discovery years after the event, and give a window into the corporate mind at the time. One such experiment revealed itself at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show, our favourite classic car show that took place, as I write this, last weekend.
One of the themes of the show is that owners' clubs repair or restore something on their stands while show-goers watch, ask questions and marvel (or commiserate) at the result. As a past owner of multiple Imps, I visited the Imp Club stand to see what was being brought back to life. The answer was the only surviving prototype, of five, of the Ferodo Imp semi-automatic transmission that the Rootes Group devised in 1966.
This unit was originally fitted to a green Imp Deluxe registered by the Rootes works as FHP 551C, one of the transmission project's two test cars. That car, sold to a private owner in Coventry after Rootes decided not to continue the project, still exists but is very rusty and needs a huge restoration, which one day it will probably get. So, at the show, the transmission was being transplanted into a very sound H-reg Super Imp belonging to Imp Club PR man Dale Bishop, who has an uncanny knack of finding incredibly unrusty and unmolested Imps.
Working on the Imp with Dale was Antoni Sozanski, whose father Richard discovered the transmission in 1996 and owns it now, along with FHP 551C. So what, exactly, was it that they were fitting? The 'automatic' part, an adaptation of a similar system offered in the Simca 1000, consists of a wet hydraulic clutch actuated by a switch within the gear lever and triggered automatically by the lever's movement, plus a torque converter. The gearbox itself is a regular Imp unit, but with first gear disabled. The ratios of the other three forward gears are unknown but might not be standard, given the need to start off in second – albeit with the help of the torque converter.
John Simister has been at the heart of British motoring journalism for more than 30 years. A classic enthusiast, he currently owns a Mazda Eunos, a Rover 2000 TC and a Singer Gazelle.
Squeezi
