Humber / Hillman / Rootes / Chrysler / Peugeot

Hi Foxcote, That is the Husky that I remember as a child, the half van version as I called them. The inside had a very spartan dash-board. In the mid sixties an Imp version also appeared as an Imp-estate, called a Husky.

I see what you mean about 'spartan'. Dashboard

That was also on the bottom of the range Minx for a while. It is so odd to see a steering wheel without loads of sticks, & whilst on sticks, look at the gear stick! It is a stick!

Philip. You brought back bad memories to me when you mention the word Simca, I have never owned one, but I knew people who were unfortunate enough to have one. As you say not a very good vehicle, the carburation was all wrong, gearbox iffey, another car derived from this, the Matra Rancho, this was just as bad, and was a right Rotbox, the engine always sounded like a bag of nails. They called it 'the poor mans Range Rover' I know the vehicle well because I spent a lot of time under them welding for days on end. marks out of 10? 0

You should have been on the development team, Norm. I will get a pic of the failed car as soon as I can. I might even have the draft pencil notes that my dad wrote about the car. You have summed it up better though. It wasn't just the design either. The production plant in France was fraught with problems where communication within the company even with senior plant managers who had poor understanding of their own language as well as Italian. It was run on the principle of one cow, one pig, a goat & a duck. I actually heard Don describe it like that. Not all of the Ryton cars passed first time either. The very first two seater Alpines had inadequate gear boxes. It was not uncommon for dad to receive a phone call in the middle of the night, to go & rescue a tester who had come to grief, once near to Peebles in Scotland. As the car was hush hush, they could not call a very nice man at the AA. Dad missed his porridge that morning. On that particular occasion, the car was driven 230 miles back to Coventry all of the way, with no clutch & in second gear.

I thought it can't be mine so had a quick churn through old photos and found the only one I'd got left and it wasn't!! Lovely cars!

I would have been so proud if it had turned out to be yours! As you say, lovely cars.

My Dad worked at Ryton until it closed a couple of years ago. Before that he worked for British Leyland. I'm not sure where the factory was, but I do remember going to the kids Christmas parties in the 70's. Has anyone got any photos of that I wonder?

Looks like you should look at the Morris Engines thread Lisa.

I started a job as a timber rep in the late 60s driving quite a high annual mileage (ave 45,000) and by mid 1972 my current ride (Ford Cortina 1600E) was well over 100,000 miles and time for a change was signalled by the company who asked what I had in mind (good firm this!). I'd been tracking the progress of the Hillman Hunter GLS and the company duly bought one for me. Talk about 'a rocket slid along rails'! and quite a good ride with it too. The close ratio gearbox lent itself well to the highly tuned Holbay engine enabling the many normally boring miles between calls becoming fun fun fun! When the next time came for a vehicle change, I opted for another but this time with Od to 3rd and 4th gears. Lost some punch but still a great drive and better mpg (company liked that!). Anyway, the next 'Rootes' type car I had was a Talbot Alpine SX in Jan 1982 and that was a sumptuous ride; not as quick as the Hunters but utterly refined in everything it did. My experience with these cars together with my earlier post about my Humber Hawk Estate provide a proven testimony of one driver's satisfaction with his experience of Rootes group vehicles over a 20 year span. Hope this isn't too boring. Peter A

It's 50 years since the Hillman Imp was launched, and some of these vehicles will be on display in Coventry city centre tomorrow afternoon Friday 3 May and all day Saturday 4 May as part of Imp 50 Events The Imp Club Campsite is based at Ivor Preece Ground on the weekend