Beloved Imp finally gets her body fixed
Before we go any further – this is not my car, and never has been. This car, known as Skye, belongs to my wife, Vickie and always has. She acquired the car (as a freebie!) back in 2003 and had it repainted. She then reassembled the car herself with a little help from me, building it into her vision of what an Imp should be. She used it for all sorts of adventures and she adores it. Fast forward the clock and in recent years, sadly the car has been a little neglected due to ill health and the demands of parenthood. I bet that sounds familiar to a lot of people…
We had planned to give it a bit of a tidy up, sort out a couple of niggly jobs and then use it for this year’s season. This would have been the first time the car had been used properly for about seven years, but it soon became clear that all was not quite as well as we’d hoped with the bodyshell. Notably the driver’s side rear wheelarch had gone a bit crunchy, and an ominous bulge was appearing under the windscreen. There were also several blisters and bubbles that needed attention. I know my limitations, and I also know how little time I have, so called in an expert… in this case, Jeff Day from Westbound Restorations. If that name sounds familiar to long-term readers, Jeff built the ex-Practical Classics two-tone Blue Imp project car many moons ago.
Strip it
After a bit of assessment, it was clear that the car wasn’t in terrible condition at all. While the paint was a touch flat, the previous restorer had done an excellent job all those years ago and the paint might polish up well, at least in places. Jeff did poke a couple of bubbly areas that I’d looked at with rose-tinted glasses on… and it was clear that the sill was way past its best plus the lower rear corner and rear transom soon became a memory.
We agreed that the car doesn’t need dipping or going back to bare metal, and the vast majority of the structure is still really good. The car needs some remedial work, but this will be repairs rather than a full-on restoration.
