This is a blessing in disguise though really (did I just use the “b” word? thats out of character!) as it means I can refurbish these arms, get them nicely sandblasted and powder coated, replace the bushings, the bearings, freshen up the brakes and all ready to slot straight under the blue car after its painted, meaning it wont have to spend any more time without suspension under it than it takes to swap the old for the new. I just hope this suspension is the same pivot point setup as the car needs. (knowing my luck lately it wont be)

And just so it doesnt feel too neglected, here are some photos of the red car.

Previous owner seems to have had a fetish for spotlights…

I am thinking this car might get a space frame rear chassis made up and a mid-mounted rotary, on a VW gearbox.

Maybe…

I got home with the spare wheel and proceeded to change the rear tyre on the blue car. These cars sit very low to the ground, and it doesn’t help when you have a flat tyre. The car would not roll so I had to jack it up with the right hand side (the side with the flat…) on the damp ground which made for fun as the trolley jack started to sink into the moist soil. As the back was sitting so low I had to jack the front of the car up, stick an axle stand under the nose, then come around in front of the rear wheel and slide the trolley jack down to the rear suspension point. With the car precariously sitting on axle stand and trolley jack on soft ground, I quickly swapped the wheels over.

At last, it will easily roll!

The car was soon pushed up onto the driveway, where I removed the front seats and the bulk of the carpet. I decided I wanted it in the garage facing the other direction which would require pushing it into the street to turn around, so I got Dave to fire up his air compressor so we could get a decent tyre pressure in all the wheels before we pushed it up to the garage.

While the car was in the street one of the neighbours was dropped off home, and he came and had a look at the car. This guy would be in his late 50s or 60s and should have known what the car was. He had no idea, and asked if it was Russian!

Richard arrived shortly after and we soon had the car up and in the garage.

Today I spent some time cleaning the garage out. I also removed the engine cover, rear window, the remainder of the carpet and the bonnet pins. Without the bonnet pins in place, the bonnet actually closes properly and locks down, the release cable from the dashboard works perfectly. The old carpet was more a thick felt and was full of dust and dirt, so I went over the inside of the car and under the bonnet with the vacuum cleaner. I got all the leaves out from under the bonnet and engine cover, and blew all the crap out of the engine bay with my air compressor.

All that remains inside the car now is the rear seat, the dodgy door and side trims, seat belts and dash.

Next thing will be to pull more bits off it ready for body repair, I have to get the parts the motor needs so I can try and start it up, and I also need to get the car up on stands with all the wheels off so I can inspect the brakes and suspension. I have a feeling the car has already been lowered as it does sit quite nicely especially at the front. Hopefully the previous to previous owner did more work than just spraypaint the suspension components, and if he did, the repairs have not gone bad sitting for so many years… fingers crossed for that one.

Many thanks to fellow Jensen owner (lucky bugger has an FF too) Paul Kumnick who has recently moved back to Adelaide from Pommyland. Paul also has Imps and has translated the above paint/trim plate and identified the color of the car in this thread on The Imp Club forum…

Balm is the paint manufacturer, like Taubmans or Berger, 438-1249 is their paint code (in acrylic enamel), MF is the CAL (Chrysler Australia Ltd) code for that particular colour, and I can’t tell you what 366 is about, perhaps a paint batch number? A number is given also for Balm’s acrylic laquer, 562-1249. The colour by the way is Medium Blue Metallic. Only two other metallics are listed, Spice Tan Metallic as per the GT on the single page brochure, and Bronze Red Metallic as per your ‘first’ Imp I’d say. That information may be totally useless to a panel shop these days, but a paint manufacturer should, with patience, make some sense of it. Don’t know where Caribbean Turquoise came from, the only turquoises listed are Tijuana and Medium turquoise. …. Bit more digging. I’ve found a photo of a VE Regal at a dealer in Sydney. Amongst the photos was one of the paint tag, BALM 1249 MF 379, so it’s in Medium Blue Metallic. It looks close enough to how that colour appears in the light of day. Well, that’s on my monitor anyway, so for what it’s worth, your car looks a lot darker than the Valiant. If that’s the case, then you are probably best getting your paint matched from a chip rather than mixing up to that code. A body shop would most likely then have a paint chip, given that code, and you could offer it up to your car and see how close it goes to matching.

The colours supplied by Balm for the GT were Alpine White, Alabaster (that uninspiring beige), Medium Blue Metallic (as per the VE in the photo) and Medium Turquoise. The red was supplied by Taubmans so the tag would have a completely different format, Balm wouldn’t even rate a mention. Replace it with TAUB I’d say. The MF code would be replaced by MJ as that was Chrylser’s code for the red colour. The tag on your car is for the blue on the Valiant and the number 1249 is the important one. The pre-fix 438 tells that it was painted in enamel, 562 if it were in laquer. That’s important to a body shop doing repairs as enamel can be painted over acrylic, but paint a car that was originally in enamel with acrylic and the solvent in the acrylic will react with, and lift the enamel underneath.

366 vs. 379. I’ll hedge my bet that they are batch numbers so both Chrylser and Balm can keep track of supplies for warranty and any other issues that may arise. The Imp would have been assembled in Port Melbourne, the VE in Adelaide, so different batches of the same paint are being sent to different factories in different states. Dare say those records aren’t around anymore

I think the color is probably the same. Light can make a huge difference to how colors look in photographs, not to mention different cameras, different processing etc. I have a slight increase in saturation and vibrance on the Imp photos seen here, plus the car was out in the sun. When in the garage tonight, the paint under the floor looks similar to the Valiant. A bit more funky though, which is good. I will see if I can get a color chip of the original color otherwise just get it matched to whats there now.

Since we did not have to jack the car up and remove a wheel, we got to looking for something else to do, so we tried to remove the passenger side engine cover latch, which was missing from the blue car. One of the screws didn’t want to budge so I went poking around elsewhere. Dave decided to keep going at it and eventually got the screw out and cleaned the mechanism up nicely, so its ready to go on the blue car now. I pulled the dummy GT grille from the front of the car, as well as the Hillman gear shift knob, steering wheel centre piece and the rubber button that pumps the windscreen washer.

We gave the car a bit of an inspection (I didn’t have my camera with me unfortunately) and I have definitely made the right decision choosing the blue car as the one to fix first. The red car has a lot more dents, some nasty rust and is generally worse off. I will pull whatever parts I need off it, but only what I really need because its missing or broken on the blue car. I think the glass is in very good condition, though the frame for the rear window is quite rusted. Incidentally, there was a gas strut on the rear window of this car. A modification I had planned for the blue one. Thats one job saved, I just need to transfer the mountings over.

Some very dodgy wiring in this car too. I do wonder why the previous owner felt it needed two pairs of driving lights PLUS a pair of yellow foglights… The windscreen washer bladder has been replaced with a drink bottle. And there is an old fire extinguisher cable tied to the underside of the dash top, passenger side. I couldn’t pull it out, fat load of good it would have been in a fire.

It is interesting to note the differences between the cars. I have no idea what the build dates are for the cars. The red one has the Chrysler pentagon badge on the bottom of the front guards. The blue one hasn’t, but thats not to say it never had them. I discovered a bonnet release cable on the passenger side of the dash that seems missing from the blue car. They both have a purple wire going into the air intake for the ventilation system, not sure what that is, as I thought they didnt have a blower? Maybe they do? Maybe thats what the other toggle switch on the dash is for? The red car has a choke lever on the floor directly in front of the gear shifter. The blue car does not have this, I can’t even see any provision for it there. Unless it is an automatic choke model? Again, I have no idea if there is such a thing…

Anyhow, we got what we needed. Though I walked away a little saddened. I knew the car was not as good as the blue one, but the closer I looked tonight the more I found, and it is sad since it was the car that originally got me interested in Imps. Oh well. Maybe one day I might properly strip it to bare minimum, fit some fibreglass panels and a spaceframe and fit a motorbike engine or something to it and make a hillclimb or drag special out of it.

The blue car continues to amaze me with how good it actually is. Yesterday we had very heavy rain and it only sprang a small leak from the rear window/hatch. I emailed off today asking about wheels and tyres, and also about rubber seals and window seal kits. Looking forward to getting a fresh coat of paint on it and all. Really keen to see if the motor will start, just need a few small parts before I can try: a battery, a coil, an ignition key(!), a carby linkage bracket and a rubber seal for the radiator fan should just about do it. The radiator seems to have straight water in there so I hope it has not corroded too badly. The oil seems quite clean, though should be changed. The air filter element is AWOL and I am yet to check the spark plugs. Inside the distributor looks clean and good. Brakes will need fluid, there is a lot of air in them. Otherwise they to are an unknown quantity.

Seems most of the interior panels have been made out of beer cartons or signs. Boags mostly. In both cars. But thats OK, they will serve as a template and we will cut new ones out of some thin MDF and cover them, either in a black vinyl or I might go plush and use alcantra. Probably going to get the Cobra Classic seats though they have no headrest. There is a version with headrests but they are around $200 dearer each… hmm. I think they only come in black vinyl. But even still the alcantra would look trick on the door trims, and I would probably get the whole dash done in it too.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get this wheel on the car and borrow some mates to help push it up into the garage.

Well after months of searching, and nearly two decades of thinking I wouldn’t mind one, I finally did it! I am now in possession of two Hillman Imp GT’s!! One of which being the car that first got me interested in them all those years ago.

The cars were bought from Michael Thomsen, owner of a fantastic Sunbeam Imp Sport, who had owned the cars for a few years but not done anything to them. At this stage the plan is to do the blue car up for light motorsport use, and the red car will be a parts donor, and depending what is left and the condition it is in, and of course whether or not I can be bothered, will be restored to stock condition. However it has a fair bit of rust and damage. Not saying it is unrestorable, but, it will be a fairly big job, and probably more than I can commit to.

We thought it would be a bit of work getting the cars up the driveway, but Randolphs LandCruiser made light work of dragging the little cars up the steep incline. We had some concern about damaging the front of the car, especially the red car with its front spoiler, which we decided just to remove and discard. The 90 degree bend halfway up the drive also provided a challenge, with the blue car nearly getting a large rock imprint in its door. The cars made it to the top of the hill, and sat on the road side waiting for the truck. Eventually the truck arrived and we soon had the cars pulled on to the back of it and away to their new homes.

At this point I must thank my beautiful wife Melissa for allowing the purchase of the cars, my father Roger for storing the red car for the time being, Randolph for the use of the ‘Cruiser and hooking up Paul and his flat tray tow truck, and Michael for doing me a great deal for the little beasties.