An excellent podcast highlighting how wrong things can get following the sunk cost fallacy: omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/danger-rocks-ahead
The fundamental difference between an old-world, linear-broadcast documentary program and one now made for RUclips is that one of these things is made by someone in a hurry, with a 'broadcast career', who has no special interest, enthusiasm, knowledge or motivation to get it all correct and authentic. The other is made by someone who is the core of a community of people with a common interest. The word passion is massively, hugely, over-used however it is appropriate here to distinguish the two. Thanks for sharing with us your passion. It's really cool that you're doing this because you think it is interesting and want to share that.
Thanks Rich, although I don't know much up front about the subject. It's all research. But certainly I'm not subject to the same deadlines that are in broadcast TV.
Bought a sky blue 1964 one in 1970 when I was 16 for £40! It was a part exchange trade in that was slightly unloved! My dad took me out in it to practice. Fantastic car that I pased my test in very soon after on my 17th Birthday! Having no cash I had to learn all about cars by working on it myself! I crossed a spark plug thread in the alloy head so had to whip it off and take it to a machine shop. Only time I didn't do everything myself. It was great as you undid the rear bumper and disconnected a couple of bolts then you could simply push the car forwards leaving the engine and gearbox exposed. The engine was a really beautiful alloy unit. I bought an aftermarket straight thru exhaust but even as a Glaswegian teenager it was too loud and people wanted to race me at traffic lights when they heard it! It was a stock engine so not capable of racing so I replaced the regular exhaust. I did buy alloy wheels and wide tyres that added to the already excellent handling. To this day the Hillman Imp is still a source of Scottish pride.
Hillman Imp was my first car. I loved the opening rear window. I once transported a 550cc motorbike for a friend by part dismantling the bike and then the pair of us picking the bike up, tilting it sideways straight through the opening rear window! The car handled it fine. I used to transport my German Shepherd dog in the back. However, I have to admit things were a little too compact for that LoL Overall, a decent fun car. At the time i owned mine, there were still lots of the classic VW Beetle still on the roads, so i never saw the rear engine configuration as an issue really.
Fun fact. MG Abingdon where the MGB and Midget were built never had a strike in the 70s which is pretty amazing. There was no moving assembly line there. Instead workers did their jobs in stations and would push each car to the next station for the next group to do their jobs. It was much more team oriented and workers had more freedom to do their jobs and double up with coworkers. Youd think BL management would go there to see what they were doing right but no, instead they closed Abingdon in 1980. A vid on that factory would be good.
Strikes aren’t the only metric by which plant viability is determined. Production cost and overall efficiency is a HUGE issue. And building low-price MGs in such a time-consuming and labour-intensive way squeezes profits. BL needed profits to survive in 1980. They certainly weren’t going to build their more modern upcoming models the way they built the low-volume ca. 1962 MGB and ca. 1958 Midget. They couldn’t afford to convert the plant and they couldn’t afford to replace such low-margin, low-volume vehicles whose market had evaporated, either. Abingdon closed because it was outdated and inefficient even though it never took a strike.
@@elba9066 Even the new TR7 (based on the aging Dolomite chassis) failed to generate the income BL needed at the time, despite brand new, state of the art factories. BL shut Triumph’s sports car range down at the same time as they culled MG’s. This was an era of decline for the sports car with the rise of the hot hatch, after all.
@@judethaddaeus9742 You wrote: "This was an era of decline for the sports car with the rise of the hot hatch". It was also the invasion (around the world) of well built and well performing Japanese sports cars such as the Datsun 240Z and Nissan GT.
My tuppence worth My father had three brand new Imps. We loved them. Nippy. Handled well - apart from the inside front wheel hopping at speed. Front steering King Pins rusted, even when the grease nipples were regularly filled with grease. Bugger to get out. The clutch friction plate and particularly the carbon thrust bearings failed perhaps a bit more often than they should...? Easy to replace though as we built a wooden trolley to support the engine and we could remove the motor in less than half an hour. No winch needed. We also had the top of the rear mounted radiator leaking, and my father repaired this by removing the rad and soldering it properly. The valve clearances were done via shims, not by adjustable rockers like many conventional engines of the day. I still have a tin with some spare shims. The single exhaust silencer was vulnerable. The one we had on a Singer Chamois burnt through and was replaced within the first year under warranty. We asked if they could just give us the replacement for us to fit, but they refused. They said that they had to fit it. They had the car for a full day, and we noticed it was making a rattling noise on the way home. There were three fixings. The clamp round the manifold, An A bracket at the rear, and a strap at the front. They had tightened the manifold clamp, but hadn't even fitted the nuts on the A bracket or the strap. When we took delivery of the car we drove 300 yards from the salesroom before running out of fuel. We had to walk to a nearby petrol station and buy a fuel can to get home. The dealers in the 60's were mostly cowboys. Despite ALL these issues, we really did love the Imps. If anyone fancies one there's a fully restored one on eBay right now for £20,000. Absolute bargain... :-) 🤣😂🤣😂🤣
A major problem was the convoluted supply chain issue that you described, and there was a lot of truth behind the unions being unjustly blamed for problems when actually they'd been pushed into problems by management who didn't want to pay them to sit around waiting for parts. This was a different era, and there was no way the infrastructure existed to reliably move partial vehicles around the country to have bits bolted on. There was also a political component to the government wanting to provide jobs for the former shipbuilders in and around Glasgow - if there was no work, they might well move, and swing the balance in seats where the government had a slim majority. It suited the tories very nicely to have a few seats with thumping great Labour majorities and a lot of seats with slim tory majorities because it is parliamentary seats, not votes, which win elections. No altruism required or present. We had a couple of Minis and a bit later a Singer Chamois, and both were good cars, the Singer much more refined than its Mini contemporary (and, to be fair, the more basic Imp). The engine and particularly the gearbox were damned near bulletproof (credit to my mother for extreme testing of the clutch and gearbox - I really wish there had been more refinement in small engined automatics back then!) and the weight distribution was fine with the engine where it was, and rear-wheel drive was the norm then, so anyone thinking of driving hard learned to handle the superior handling (yes, I still prefer it). The Mini, by contrast, was relatively crude and handled like an oversized rollerskate, or maybe a go-cart (or soap-box racer as Americans call them). Don't forget that the single best-selling car of all time with the longest production run was a rear-engined RWD model by VW against which the Hillman/Sunbeam/Singer models make a far better comparison and showing (the Beetle had a horrible weight distribution, with the engine even further back). In the end, it came down to that subtle and unpredictable thing, fashion.
Thank you, as always for such an entertaining and informative video! I always enjoy your content! I also remember Quentin Wilson’s The Cars The Star series - entertaining at the time, but compared with modern day YT car content, sadly lacking! For a car nerd like myself, content like yours is old car gold! I can now bore people senseless with even more car facts! Thanks again……..👏
Served a Toolmaking apprenticeship at the Linwood plant 1969 to 1974 then moved overseas since so this was interesting to view,brought back many memories.
Unbelievable information, I think it looked very cool 😎. Costs , profits , pay scale , money , slow downs , unions , and strikes . History repeats itself . Good video .
Great videos as always. A note about the Nissan factory. It is the most efficient car factory in Europe. When it opened, they recognised only one union, which wasn't a union involved in car making at the time. This caused a lot of problems between unions at the time.
The 875 Coventry Climax (Imp) engine was also used in a de-tuned version by Reliant Cars in the mid 1960’s and called the ‘Bond 875’ a three wheeler, a very quick lightweight car, handled well too.
Fascinating, as always. I fear that one day you will be making a video on the closure of the final British car factory. I have the awful feeling it won't be too many years away....
What you need to know about Quentin is that as a car dealer, he was prosecuted numerous times for clocking, ie winding the miles back, the beeeb are also well known for not fact checking, and dumbing down. Rootes also nailed together Avengers very badly.
TBH Rootes were too small to start anew and were not helped having to deal with the Acton strikes from 1959 to late 1961 (also known as the Honeymoon strikes) at British Light Steel Pressings during its expansion period, which may have played a role in management overlooking the Imp's problems during its development. See the history section in the Hillman Owners Club for more background.
In 1974 a mate of mine ordered a new Humber Sceptre. He was informed by the dealership that it was going to be built at Linwood. On hearing this, being aware of the reputation of the Linwood workers for striking and the "poor quality control" he promptly cancelled his order.
Enjoyed the contrast of style in your extra's video and hearing your take and insight on the industry, as well as your research into making the video etc. I appreciate the amount of work that goes into producing these, thank you.
Unless Chrysler were blind to the UK industrial landscape in the 70's and the issues for a company from Coventry making a car 300 miles away they knew what they were getting into and I would argue Chrysler management was as poor as Rootes but for some different reasons hence they sold to PSA to bail from the mistake they made. I think its unfair to major on union issues ( of which there were many ) but British management at that time was appallingly lacking in ability
I think it’s fair to say that Chrysler Uk was a complete disaster. They bought a car company that was way past its prime, didn’t understand the market, the factories or the workforce, then lost interest. The great shame is that Rootes products were, in their prime, well engineered, novel and well made cars - I’ve been surprised by how good their 50s and 60s cars were regarded. The later Chrysler UK cars were a bit shoddy when compared with the competition, especially Ford. Later Talbots, under Peugeot management weren’t much better, even though they’d had some wins, mainly the Alpine and Horizon (still don’t understand how it made COTY in 1978 - maybe it was a poor year for the competition). Sadly, the brands had to be pensioned off - the cars weren’t that brilliant!
As Big Car showed in another video, some of the British (Leyland) Management were so fed up with union problems that they went to Korea to show Hyundai how to make cars. That seemed to work out well for everyone involved.
Chrysler began buying into Rootes in 1964, not the ‘70s. Chrysler’s whole aim in buying into Rootes and SIMCA was to compete with GM and Ford in Europe, nothing more. Chrysler had no cohesive strategy, and Chrysler brass never really studied the European market to develop a strategy. They let Rootes run their side and SIMCA run theirs. Eventually they decided to coordinate efforts with the Chrysler 180 project, but went about it in the worst possible way, playing the UK and France against each other. The result was a mediocre effort severely compromised. It wasn’t until the UK operation began to sink that all the product development muscle really transferred to SIMCA (although styling stayed in the UK) with the Alpine, Horizon, and Solara. But losses had mounted for too long and the marque suffered in Europe due to lack of identity and consistent investment. As an example of how bad Chrysler management was in the early ‘70s, when Lynn Townsend, Chrysler CEO, ordered Chrysler to license a foreign vehicle design for the US market, brass pointed out that their own European division had the upcoming Alpine to offer. Townsend angrily rejected the idea, saying he hated his own European product line and would rather offer a competitor’s product in the US market instead. Luckily he resigned in 1974, in time for his successor, John Riccardo, to develop the upcoming Horizon for the US market, as well. But yes, to say that Chrysler had terrible management at the time - especially regarding its European operations - would be fully accurate.
It’s often overlooked that Rootes’ Linwood factory was built across the road from Pressed Steel’s already established Linwood factory where the Imp bodies were built and painted. Pressed Steel built car bodies for Rover and Volvo in their Linwood factory where they had also been building railway rolling stock for years.
You really weren’t sure who Quentin Wilson is? He was a Top Gear presenter for years with Clarkson and James May, and at one time he seemed to pop up anywhere on radio and television where somebody wanted a commentator about something to do with cars or the motor industry. I think he’s a motor dealer as well as a journalist. As far as I can tell he’s a bit quieter these days, but at one time on British TV it was hard to avoid him!
I have a friend called Quentin Miller (who was the official importer of ZX81s into NZ!), and I previously made a mistake calling Quentin Willson Quentin Miller, so I was double checking myself!
Linwood wasn’t actually closed that long. After building the last Imp in early 1976, Chrysler UK moved *Avenger* production there and began making the facelifted ‘76 models pretty quickly after the Imp was sunset. The Sunbeam, being based on the Avenger, was added to the production lines when it was ready in 1977. Linwood then closed in 1981 after PSA decided they didn’t need the aging Avenger anymore and after they’d slapped together a Peugeot 104-based Talbot Samba, made in France, to replace the Sunbeam. Ryton, which was making Avengers until 1976, switched to making Alpines and, later, Horizons and Solaras.
Any idea what Linwood is now ? I wonder how long it will be before Stellantis stop manufacturing in the U.K. My Father's last two cars were U.K. made Peugeots but I think the second one was one of the last.
You were right the first time around on political influence, but it was the fact that Lord William Rootes and his brother were generous donors to the Conservative Party. Sir William Rootes received his Baron title from PM Harold Macmillan and his govt in 1959(He was knighted a decade earlier for his WWII work). The generous government subsidy for the Scottish factory did flow from the closure of shipyards and Macmillan govt wouldn't permit a new factory to be built in Coventry. It was clearly a carrot and stick approach by Macmillan.
@@LittleCar Since late 1930s with the building of shadow factories for aircraft and vehicle production right across the UK, the UK government had been highly interventionist in motor industrial policy and picking companies for projects. MacMillan was there throughout that period and had been Minister for Housing and L.G. prior, being highly interventionist in the market. It sounds odd today in a post Thatcher world, but govts did build towns and match industry with communities.
So much of Product and Manufacturing design relates to things which are fashionable or Trends, rather than functional, and beginning at the Boardroom and finance levels . . . So many layers to a story such as this, from the VW type 1 inspiration for the format to the aluminum engine . . . to the Suez Crisis of 56 ( I'll bet 95% of Americans today have never heard of the Suez Crisis) . . . Many processes in life should begin with a Birdseye View, and progress from there : "What Business Are We In ?"
I worked at Cowley in 2002 - the weekend shift is mostly immigrants, and the management at the time was German. As soon as Longbridge management took over my section their attitude broke my enthusiastic, record output. I was sacked soon after the change. Management, not workers,, in my experience, were the problem.
I'm living my own 'sunk cost fallacy' right now with an old outboard motor I am trying to get running! Always figured the Imp was trying to duplicate the Beetle success.
The problem is that you can only use that label in retrospect - if you succeed, it doesn't apply, and the engineers get praised for their tenacity in solving the problems.
It’s important for everyone to feel as if they’re engaged in a success story. BMC had Alec Issigonas while Rootes did not and the difference in engineering and design meant that while BMC were riding the wave of success, Rootes were striving to make an inferior product, using inexperienced workers, far away from design and engineering facilities. Is it any wonder they failed.
3:00 Earlier this week someone on a radio programme was saying that before the 1980s politics were far less confrontational. with far less difference between Labour and the Conservatives. 8:49 I believe that right from the start Sunderland has only had one Union and has tried to minimise the Workers vs Management attitude that caused so many problems in the 1970s. p.s. Have you ever seen the film "Made in Dagenham" ? If not I'm sure you would enjoy it.
There's another big difference between Sunderland & Linwood - the management! British management in the 60s was very poor, largely run by the old boys network. Good job we've got past that eh ;-)
Hi Great video. Love the imp although never owned one. I have worked on a couple and Driven them. But Re Union power in Uk in 60 & 70's. Being a Printer and Having to Be a Union member. (E.g. Closed Shop.) A Strike could be called at any moment, over any issue however small. The F.O.C. or 'Father of the Chapel' ( Yes we were all Brothers, few Sisters at that time), In the N.G.A. (Shop Steward to most..!) He would Call a Meeting, Blowing a Whistle, due to Noise from Presses..! If the Sun was Shining, we would Walk out. And Woe Betide any who voted 'NO.!' Most Nipping off to the Local Pub, to have a Few Pints, Grumble. Then head back to Sleep it off on Pallets, until problem Sorted. Sometimes an Hour, Shift, couple of Days or at worst in my Experience '6 Fudging Weeks'. ( with wife n New Mortgage to pay.) Hence 1980 I came to Australia. And found a Friend Driving a bloody Imp..!! Thanx for your efforts. Cheers kim in Oz. 😎
Actually, the issue that Our Host puts with "commercially produced docs" (like the BBC one for the Hillman Imp) is that even as BBC has A BIGGER BUDGET to do research, YT Creators (like Our Host) tend to be MORE FOCUSED (even if they don't know about the subject at han before) on their research and it shows. So much that some professional doc creators (worldwide A&E and Discovery channels, PBS and even BBC are now finally offering most of their older stuff (when most professional producers had better quality than in 2022) on YT for free to compete against YT Channels, like Wendover Prod., Real Life Lore, It's History!, The History Guy and others, that actually do care in their research. ...and even some of those YT Creators have reached intro streaming, like Nebula, Curiosity Stream and Magellan TV for "more controversial issues" YT won't monetize their videos on. (if it matters to the people, it has been evaluated and documented by a YT Creator already or is on his or her list already)
Interesting videos but I am disappointed by your focus on the apparent militancy of the unions and no mention of the competency of the management. If you look a little deeper it becomes clear that much of the woes of the British car industry in the time period fall at the feet of incompetent management and ridiculous and disconnected decision making. I agree that the decision to continue with the Imp is an excellent example of the sunk cost fallacy. But it wasn’t the unions blundering by persisting with a doomed project was it. In the period, the UK was still rife with class division and that in no small part influenced industrial relations. My experience in the UK more recently suggests it still hasn’t changed enough.
I do talk about this, but not explicitly calling them out. They decided to make a factory in Linwood without a good plan to solve production issues quickly. They decided to launch a car that was clearly not ready. They OK'ed a rear engine design without determining it wouldn't sell. They took way too long to develop the car. Like many instances of the British car industry, it's not one side you can point your finger at.
From my memories of my mother's Imp in Ireland & Denmark, It wasn't a very practical car. I seem to remember problems starting it and it broke down a few times. By the time they replaced it they were glad to see it go. Clearly bad design choices and poor labour relations were a key problem in making this car.
I'd always thought of the Imp as being the Rootes groups answer to the VW Beetle (the irony that VW & Wolfsburg were offered to the Rootes group and they turned it down isn't lost on me) in that not only the layout but using as the main chassis member (like vw), which made them a favourite basis for bodyshell/kit cars (as a kid, i remember a neighbour having a Davrian kit car based on an imp) and didn't Bond 875 three wheelers use an imp powertrain?
The Blackberry was designed as competition to the iPhone, right? The world the Imp was borne into had women staying at home and being full time wife-mums. Life was good. Sure they did not have the internet then, but quality of life was not bad despite protestations from boomers. IMHO the Imp appealed to the same housewives that drove Japanese cars when they first arrived or European imports before that. Why would you buy an Imp when you could by a Datsun that came with electric windows, a stereo and extra fluffy seats? Oh, and a warranty?
Interesting you chose to compare Sunderland Nissan factory because that started off in a similar situation with Xshipbuilders but a very different outcome
In the 1980s everyone from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher down was determined that the mistakes of the 1970s wouldn't be repeated. She certainly didn't believe in "Sunk Costs". In fact after the 523 strikes organised by Union Leader "Red Robbo" in 30 months at BL. I don't think Thatcher would have approved any more significant Government investment in a U.K. car company.
If the Nissan workers in Sunderland really wanted to keep their jobs, they should have voted remain. You may be right about the unions being awkward. The unions were formed to promote workers pay and conditions, unfortunately many union members were seduced by various ideologies which led to bad decisions and the debacle of 1984. Rant over. A friend had an imp, his view was that the head gasket was the major weakness. Green hermatite was his solution.
I was there when the Imp was launched and to me and my mates it was a "Gals car " right Cissy thing, unlike the Mint Cooper. Remember a Roots Salesman reply, when we asked him about Imps. "Well put it this way mate, we sell 'em !" They were very unreliable overheating was it not ?
Bought a 1966 Singer Chamois in 1975 for £150 which was reasonably reliable. Picked up a hitch hiker on the A34 who after a mile asked “this is a quiet car - is it foreign?” My mum had two. You had to drive like a lunatic to get the rear end to hang out. The heater? Don’t ask.
I saw this video, and as a Corvair enthusiast. I believe this also happened with the Corvair. Chevrolet or GM made decisions that lead to the production of the Corvair. It turned into an expensive dead end for GM to make. I think it's cool that Corvairs exist but from a business standpoint a car like the Chevy II would have been a better choice. I guess from an emotional standpoint I'm glad they did the Corvair. Sometimes companies can make wonderful cars from what starts out to be a questionable concept.
Interesting that you suggest that unions were applying pressure to strike at Hillman. "Working for Ford" by Huw Beynon, a detailed study into industrial relations at the Ford Motor Company suggests the matter was quite the opposite, with the actual unions often supporting the proposals of the management while those on the shop floor were far more inclined to militancy. Perhaps that's a difference between the two firms, or perhaps it just depends on who you ask.
As with history, it's what people remember, and the truth could be very different. I got that information from personal recollections from factory workers there in a video I linked in the description. We would only know what was the actual truth if we were there.
I can recommend a great book,"Our Hillman Imp" by Paul Coulter.It doesnt go too deep into the Imp story,but its a great read nonetheless. Linwoods plant is now loads of car dealerships ironically,although part of the factory remains as offices.Sadly Linwood the town has declined too...
Sunk cost fallacy ....sounds like the fascinating story of BMW F1 in 2008 when they were leading the world championship a year ahead of schedule ....but refused to change the plan ..leading to probably their only chance ever gone ..... Fascinating doc from Mobile chicane on the Tube ...check it out ...
I was always impressed by the Imp. I worked at a parts store that sold parts for British cars. We joked that Imp stood for internal missing parts. The Japanese should have built the Imp. Then it would have been remarkable. To bad it was Rootes that built the little car called Imp.
The Govt policy of relocating car plants to regional unemployment blackspots was a good one but fundamentally deeply flawed and never a success. Nissan Sunderland is one exception to that rule but I think the Japanese approach to things where everyone is important made the difference.
Interesting video! I just do not understand how things in the late 1960's or early 1970's were going so much better in West Germany or even in France.......
Well done on Hillman IMP vids, very interesting👍I would prefer mini over Hillman but like idea of his/her, there could be more offerings like Racing version or town n country which Chrysler offered.
Now you say it I vaguely remember that, so I thought I'd go and look for figures. In 1960 they sold over 100,000. www.aronline.co.uk/history/bmc-leyland-production-figures/
It’s fascinating fact that Chrysler Europe division was taken over by PSA Groupe, decades later Fiat and Chrysler join forces then more recently join PSA Groupe once more (Now Stellantis) I wonder what it’s fate is going to be 🤔
The Sunderland Nissan factory is presumably managed by Japanese people. That’s a lot different from the haughty British management style of the 60s and 70s.
I had a singer chamois coupe in ascot grey spent a fortune on it tuning it with 998 engine race head webber carb janspeed manifold Hartwell lowered suspension would rev to 9000 r17 cam tufrided crank wills rings all expensive bits, fun to drive but so unrelible and 25mpg sold it and bought a ford escort 1100.mk1 I could not believe how reliable a car could be , just put fuel in and drive it . IF ONLY
If you hadn't messed around with the Chamois so much, it could have been as reliable as my mother's. Still, you were lucky to find the only reliable Mk1 Escort Fix Or Repair Daily.
I actually think the Imp looked modern and not inferior to the Mini in terms of style, and the large amount of glass also gave good all around view to the drivers and passengers. Mini’s reliability wasn’t that superior to the Imp either. The downfall of Imp was of course a combination of the weird rear engine arrangement handicapping some level of practicality, poor promotion (can’t they get some mini skirted ladies to spearhead the advertising?), and maybe harder to work on than a Mini. A missed opportunity I would say.
I agree. I don't think the styling was bad. Of course BMC had issues with making the Mini for the low price they sold it at, which of course put Rootes under pressure to keep their prices low, which meant everyone raced to the bottom and went bankrupt.
You know that in Germany, British Leyland was often called "British Elend" ("Elend" is German for miserable and rhymes with Leyland) for all the known reasons but Chrysler managed to f'up things pretty well, too. As you had mentioned the Sunbeam you could also do an episode about the Horizon which should be pretty interesting for the fact that it was rather unsuccessful in Europe but sold good in the US where it was produced as Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon until 1990, three years longer than the production run in Europe. And...at least for the European models, Chrysler and Peugeot managed to f'up again. 😉
Love your videos but you do seem to often focus on problems calling them ‘union problems’ , the problems were ‘management problems’ at least as much, gives your otherwise excellent videos a bit of a Daily Mail slant
There is a bit of bias in there, but I try not to have bias, just to present the facts. I do call out many management problems in these videos. However, Rootes weren't having problems with labour disputes in Coventry, and they had the same management structure. I personally see the "union problem" in Linwood not with workers, but with the three competing unions who were vying for prominence in a new factory, and promising they could get the workers all kinds of great things. I also think unions can be a great power for good (zero hour contracts, working conditions for Amazon warehouse workers).
I think it's a little unfair to maintain that Rootes should have cancelled the Imp project in 1959 and waited until they could produce a frontwheel drive car. Actually when you look across Europe rear-engined cars were doing quite well in the sixties. Think about the Renault 8 and 10, Simca 1000, Fiat 850 and many others - not to forget the old VW Beetle (that wasn't replaced until the mid-seventies). Add to this that frontwheel drive cars was rather complicated for factories to manufacture. Witness the fact that even VW had to market a small volume "sportscar", the Scirocco, before they had built up the knowhow to launch the worldbeating Golf, Volvo did the same thing with the 480, and even BMW has bought into the Mini to get knowhow to produce a frontwheel drive car. It is clear with 60 years of hindsight that wrong decisions were taken, but it wasn't a no-brainer that the project would fail. Actually I knew people back in the day who preferred the rearengined Imp to any frontwheel drive car - and it had the folding rear seat and opening rear window for shopping.
Rear wheel drive cars sold OK in Europe, but not in the UK - the Imp's main market, and I reference the poll at the time that showed Brits didn't like rear-engined cars. Yes, hindsight is great, and clearly now FWD was the way to go, and you can certainly argue that wasn't clear in 1959. But no matter what they did with the engineering, clearly Rootes got the car wrong when it launched as it sold so poorly despite a big fanfare at launch.
Have our British friends finally learned the folly of letting politicians stick their noses into major industry choices? I hope so, but I don't know. Are they still interfering?
I have always thought of Imp, Elf, and Pixie (a name Nissan has used recently) as being pretty much the same thing. I was thinking about some American car names recently. Does the Nissan Rogue (called the Juke in the U.K.) mug you and steal your wallet ? Is the Honda Fit (called the Jazz in the U.K.) epileptic ? It must be very difficult thinking of a name that suits all countries.
There was a sports style glass fibre version of the imp that came along, but built by third party Ginetta as the G15. You mentioned other imp based vehicles and surprised you didn't mention the G15!
I think I was aware of it when I did research (back in mid-June), but you have to stop somewhere, and this only took the major parts from the Imp (not the chassis).
The Centaur kits / the probe derivatives do not have a chassis. See, the Imp is nothing but a lower steel tub, a bolt-on rear frame thing where the trailing arms hang on and the gearbox front mount. The dampers are mounted on the steel tub, and the front axle halves are bolted on below the tank by L shaped parts. What the Adams + Peter Timpson did was to throw away the Imp‘s steel tub and cast their own futuristic glassfibre „bathtub“, and bolted on these parts in the same manner as on the Imp. There is no chassis no nothing, its just a plastic bathtub with bolted on axles and parts. My Centaur kit is now on my car lift, above my Unimog, and every time I work on the Mog I walk under Centaur… mail me for pictures if needed.
just seen your video....great presentation..... may be mentioned in other comments but no mention of the Clan Crusader as another version....and a rally winner (Isle of Mull)?
The reason why the factory was not built in Coventry was because of the Distribution of Industry Act(s). This was to move industry from the West Midlands to areas with industries that were doing well and had full employment to regions that had declining industries such as Wales, the North East and North West England and Scotland. There was a prohibition, especially in Birmingham, on building factories and offices. The aim was to reduce the population of Birmingham from 1.1 million to less than a million. The Distribution of Industry acts applied throughout the UK, but there was a specific focus on Birmingham. Rootes had space behind it Coventry factory to build the new Imp factory but could not get the necessary development licence. Many other factories were moved from the Midlands to other areas, Ford to Bridgend, Rover to Cardiff etc. Whilst distributing industry in this way may be a good idea politically to soak up unemployment, it does not help if employment is taken away from an area that has been successfully making the product, increasing the cost of the product.
Little Car videos are consistantly excellent, but the emphasis placed on union issues here is a display of one-sided stereotyping. In more successful countries like Germany or Japan, there isn't the antagonistic and adversarial attitude from the management, unlike British companies. Volkswagen, for instance, welcomes cooperation with the unions and their members because they realize a harmonious relationship is better for consistant production. The class system (Us vs. Them) was very much alive and a part of British industry in the period discussed here, please keep that in mind. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
Whenever two sides decide to fight instead of cooperate, it doesn't end well. You can see that from countries to political parties, to unions and management.
Striking over a pie vending machine that has stopped working is the most British thing ever, and perhaps the explanation of how some people could like Margaret Thatcher. Mind boggling stuff.
I think I should take you to task on your union bashing, I'm not saying the Unions were all sunshine and sweetness, but the real issues were useless bosses who couldn't organise the proverbial. Most were ex public school/grammer school who paid themseves very highly and thought of the workforce as a pile of disease. In the 1980's I did a thesis on the troubles of the 70's and it became very clear that pay increases invariably lagged price rises by three months, and those price increases and inflation in general came about from 3 specific incidences. Firstly decimilisation started the ball rolling when profteering from it went through the roof. Imagine a penny sweet for the little ones, 1 old penny became 1 new penny, 2.4 times the value. OK many penny sweets became half a new penny, still a 20% price hike, and so it went on, did we ger a 20% pay raise to compensate, the hell we did, so everything becam at least 20% dearer or more. Secondly we joined the EEC(EU). I also found papers relating to our being accepted, the standout statement therein was "Great Britain must not compete with France, Germany and any other Industrial member State in manufactured Goods" Now you know the real reason for the closures of all our factories. We sold ourselves to the Devil, and we were'nt offered the chance to vote on it. Lastly the 1973 Oil Crisis.
![Kodak Black - Versatile 4 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VcP_1Ua__vY/mqdefault.jpg)
An excellent podcast highlighting how wrong things can get following the sunk cost fallacy:
omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/danger-rocks-ahead
A great idea but failed by basic infrastructure problems
The fundamental difference between an old-world, linear-broadcast documentary program and one now made for RUclips is that one of these things is made by someone in a hurry, with a 'broadcast career', who has no special interest, enthusiasm, knowledge or motivation to get it all correct and authentic. The other is made by someone who is the core of a community of people with a common interest. The word passion is massively, hugely, over-used however it is appropriate here to distinguish the two.
Thanks for sharing with us your passion. It's really cool that you're doing this because you think it is interesting and want to share that.
Thanks Rich, although I don't know much up front about the subject. It's all research. But certainly I'm not subject to the same deadlines that are in broadcast TV.
AtheFUmen 🎯
Well said 🙂👍
Bought a sky blue 1964 one in 1970 when I was 16 for £40! It was a part exchange trade in that was slightly unloved! My dad took me out in it to practice. Fantastic car that I pased my test in very soon after on my 17th Birthday! Having no cash I had to learn all about cars by working on it myself! I crossed a spark plug thread in the alloy head so had to whip it off and take it to a machine shop. Only time I didn't do everything myself. It was great as you undid the rear bumper and disconnected a couple of bolts then you could simply push the car forwards leaving the engine and gearbox exposed. The engine was a really beautiful alloy unit. I bought an aftermarket straight thru exhaust but even as a Glaswegian teenager it was too loud and people wanted to race me at traffic lights when they heard it! It was a stock engine so not capable of racing so I replaced the regular exhaust. I did buy alloy wheels and wide tyres that added to the already excellent handling. To this day the Hillman Imp is still a source of Scottish pride.
Hillman Imp was my first car. I loved the opening rear window. I once transported a 550cc motorbike for a friend by part dismantling the bike and then the pair of us picking the bike up, tilting it sideways straight through the opening rear window! The car handled it fine. I used to transport my German Shepherd dog in the back. However, I have to admit things were a little too compact for that LoL Overall, a decent fun car. At the time i owned mine, there were still lots of the classic VW Beetle still on the roads, so i never saw the rear engine configuration as an issue really.
Americans would think they need an F150 pickup to transport a Motorbike 🙂
What did they handle like ? Were they bullet proof ?
Fun fact. MG Abingdon where the MGB and Midget were built never had a strike in the 70s which is pretty amazing. There was no moving assembly line there. Instead workers did their jobs in stations and would push each car to the next station for the next group to do their jobs. It was much more team oriented and workers had more freedom to do their jobs and double up with coworkers. Youd think BL management would go there to see what they were doing right but no, instead they closed Abingdon in 1980. A vid on that factory would be good.
Interesting - thanks for the info. My dad had a West Midlands engineering firm in the 1970s and never had a day of strikes either.
Strikes aren’t the only metric by which plant viability is determined. Production cost and overall efficiency is a HUGE issue. And building low-price MGs in such a time-consuming and labour-intensive way squeezes profits.
BL needed profits to survive in 1980. They certainly weren’t going to build their more modern upcoming models the way they built the low-volume ca. 1962 MGB and ca. 1958 Midget.
They couldn’t afford to convert the plant and they couldn’t afford to replace such low-margin, low-volume vehicles whose market had evaporated, either.
Abingdon closed because it was outdated and inefficient even though it never took a strike.
@@judethaddaeus9742 MG was profitable but needed funding for replacement of the MG B etc and politics in BMC/Leyland favoured Triumph
@@elba9066 Even the new TR7 (based on the aging Dolomite chassis) failed to generate the income BL needed at the time, despite brand new, state of the art factories. BL shut Triumph’s sports car range down at the same time as they culled MG’s. This was an era of decline for the sports car with the rise of the hot hatch, after all.
@@judethaddaeus9742 You wrote: "This was an era of decline for the sports car with the rise of the hot hatch". It was also the invasion (around the world) of well built and well performing Japanese sports cars such as the Datsun 240Z and Nissan GT.
My tuppence worth
My father had three brand new Imps. We loved them. Nippy. Handled well - apart from the inside front wheel hopping at speed. Front steering King Pins rusted, even when the grease nipples were regularly filled with grease. Bugger to get out. The clutch friction plate and particularly the carbon thrust bearings failed perhaps a bit more often than they should...? Easy to replace though as we built a wooden trolley to support the engine and we could remove the motor in less than half an hour. No winch needed. We also had the top of the rear mounted radiator leaking, and my father repaired this by removing the rad and soldering it properly. The valve clearances were done via shims, not by adjustable rockers like many conventional engines of the day. I still have a tin with some spare shims. The single exhaust silencer was vulnerable. The one we had on a Singer Chamois burnt through and was replaced within the first year under warranty. We asked if they could just give us the replacement for us to fit, but they refused. They said that they had to fit it. They had the car for a full day, and we noticed it was making a rattling noise on the way home. There were three fixings. The clamp round the manifold, An A bracket at the rear, and a strap at the front. They had tightened the manifold clamp, but hadn't even fitted the nuts on the A bracket or the strap. When we took delivery of the car we drove 300 yards from the salesroom before running out of fuel. We had to walk to a nearby petrol station and buy a fuel can to get home. The dealers in the 60's were mostly cowboys. Despite ALL these issues, we really did love the Imps. If anyone fancies one there's a fully restored one on eBay right now for £20,000. Absolute bargain... :-) 🤣😂🤣😂🤣
as a car nerd that was born in the 70s and grew up with 70s 80s cars, its really good to have you around!
A major problem was the convoluted supply chain issue that you described, and there was a lot of truth behind the unions being unjustly blamed for problems when actually they'd been pushed into problems by management who didn't want to pay them to sit around waiting for parts. This was a different era, and there was no way the infrastructure existed to reliably move partial vehicles around the country to have bits bolted on. There was also a political component to the government wanting to provide jobs for the former shipbuilders in and around Glasgow - if there was no work, they might well move, and swing the balance in seats where the government had a slim majority. It suited the tories very nicely to have a few seats with thumping great Labour majorities and a lot of seats with slim tory majorities because it is parliamentary seats, not votes, which win elections. No altruism required or present.
We had a couple of Minis and a bit later a Singer Chamois, and both were good cars, the Singer much more refined than its Mini contemporary (and, to be fair, the more basic Imp). The engine and particularly the gearbox were damned near bulletproof (credit to my mother for extreme testing of the clutch and gearbox - I really wish there had been more refinement in small engined automatics back then!) and the weight distribution was fine with the engine where it was, and rear-wheel drive was the norm then, so anyone thinking of driving hard learned to handle the superior handling (yes, I still prefer it). The Mini, by contrast, was relatively crude and handled like an oversized rollerskate, or maybe a go-cart (or soap-box racer as Americans call them). Don't forget that the single best-selling car of all time with the longest production run was a rear-engined RWD model by VW against which the Hillman/Sunbeam/Singer models make a far better comparison and showing (the Beetle had a horrible weight distribution, with the engine even further back). In the end, it came down to that subtle and unpredictable thing, fashion.
I am always IMPressed with how much detail you have in your videos.
Thanks for the great content!
Thank you, as always for such an entertaining and informative video! I always enjoy your content! I also remember Quentin Wilson’s The Cars The Star series - entertaining at the time, but compared with modern day YT car content, sadly lacking! For a car nerd like myself, content like yours is old car gold! I can now bore people senseless with even more car facts! Thanks again……..👏
Served a Toolmaking apprenticeship at the Linwood plant 1969 to 1974 then moved overseas since so this was interesting to view,brought back many memories.
Unbelievable information, I think it looked very cool 😎.
Costs , profits , pay scale , money , slow downs , unions , and strikes .
History repeats itself .
Good video .
Great videos as always. A note about the Nissan factory. It is the most efficient car factory in Europe. When it opened, they recognised only one union, which wasn't a union involved in car making at the time. This caused a lot of problems between unions at the time.
In the US all the japanese korean and german car plants have zero unions. Workers always voted no.
The 875 Coventry Climax (Imp) engine was also used in a de-tuned version by Reliant Cars in the mid 1960’s and called the ‘Bond 875’ a three wheeler, a very quick lightweight car, handled well too.
Fascinating, as always. I fear that one day you will be making a video on the closure of the final British car factory. I have the awful feeling it won't be too many years away....
What you need to know about Quentin is that as a car dealer, he was prosecuted numerous times for clocking, ie winding the miles back, the beeeb are also well known for not fact checking, and dumbing down. Rootes also nailed together Avengers very badly.
Growing up across the pond I never saw a real Imp, but my Dinky model was a real treat with opening bonnet & boot
TBH Rootes were too small to start anew and were not helped having to deal with the Acton strikes from 1959 to late 1961 (also known as the Honeymoon strikes) at British Light Steel Pressings during its expansion period, which may have played a role in management overlooking the Imp's problems during its development. See the history section in the Hillman Owners Club for more background.
In 1974 a mate of mine ordered a new Humber Sceptre. He was informed by the dealership that it was going to be built at Linwood. On hearing this, being aware of the reputation of the Linwood workers for striking and the "poor quality control" he promptly cancelled his order.
Enjoyed the contrast of style in your extra's video and hearing your take and insight on the industry, as well as your research into making the video etc. I appreciate the amount of work that goes into producing these, thank you.
MGBs and Triumph TRs had soft tops, which the Americans wanted. Siting a car factory 300 miles from the Midlands suppliers was crazy.
Unless Chrysler were blind to the UK industrial landscape in the 70's and the issues for a company from Coventry making a car 300 miles away they knew what they were getting into and I would argue Chrysler management was as poor as Rootes but for some different reasons hence they sold to PSA to bail from the mistake they made. I think its unfair to major on union issues ( of which there were many ) but British management at that time was appallingly lacking in ability
I think it’s fair to say that Chrysler Uk was a complete disaster. They bought a car company that was way past its prime, didn’t understand the market, the factories or the workforce, then lost interest. The great shame is that Rootes products were, in their prime, well engineered, novel and well made cars - I’ve been surprised by how good their 50s and 60s cars were regarded. The later Chrysler UK cars were a bit shoddy when compared with the competition, especially Ford. Later Talbots, under Peugeot management weren’t much better, even though they’d had some wins, mainly the Alpine and Horizon (still don’t understand how it made COTY in 1978 - maybe it was a poor year for the competition). Sadly, the brands had to be pensioned off - the cars weren’t that brilliant!
1970s Chrysler, nuf said...
As Big Car showed in another video, some of the British (Leyland) Management were so fed up with union problems that they went to Korea to show Hyundai how to make cars. That seemed to work out well for everyone involved.
@@MrDuncl errr - no they didn't - Hyundai poached some top designers - BL carried on for years after
Chrysler began buying into Rootes in 1964, not the ‘70s.
Chrysler’s whole aim in buying into Rootes and SIMCA was to compete with GM and Ford in Europe, nothing more. Chrysler had no cohesive strategy, and Chrysler brass never really studied the European market to develop a strategy.
They let Rootes run their side and SIMCA run theirs. Eventually they decided to coordinate efforts with the Chrysler 180 project, but went about it in the worst possible way, playing the UK and France against each other. The result was a mediocre effort severely compromised.
It wasn’t until the UK operation began to sink that all the product development muscle really transferred to SIMCA (although styling stayed in the UK) with the Alpine, Horizon, and Solara. But losses had mounted for too long and the marque suffered in Europe due to lack of identity and consistent investment.
As an example of how bad Chrysler management was in the early ‘70s, when Lynn Townsend, Chrysler CEO, ordered Chrysler to license a foreign vehicle design for the US market, brass pointed out that their own European division had the upcoming Alpine to offer.
Townsend angrily rejected the idea, saying he hated his own European product line and would rather offer a competitor’s product in the US market instead.
Luckily he resigned in 1974, in time for his successor, John Riccardo, to develop the upcoming Horizon for the US market, as well.
But yes, to say that Chrysler had terrible management at the time - especially regarding its European operations - would be fully accurate.
It’s often overlooked that Rootes’ Linwood factory was built across the road from Pressed Steel’s already established Linwood factory where the Imp bodies were built and painted. Pressed Steel built car bodies for Rover and Volvo in their Linwood factory where they had also been building railway rolling stock for years.
You really weren’t sure who Quentin Wilson is? He was a Top Gear presenter for years with Clarkson and James May, and at one time he seemed to pop up anywhere on radio and television where somebody wanted a commentator about something to do with cars or the motor industry. I think he’s a motor dealer as well as a journalist. As far as I can tell he’s a bit quieter these days, but at one time on British TV it was hard to avoid him!
I have a friend called Quentin Miller (who was the official importer of ZX81s into NZ!), and I previously made a mistake calling Quentin Willson Quentin Miller, so I was double checking myself!
Linwood wasn’t actually closed that long. After building the last Imp in early 1976, Chrysler UK moved *Avenger* production there and began making the facelifted ‘76 models pretty quickly after the Imp was sunset.
The Sunbeam, being based on the Avenger, was added to the production lines when it was ready in 1977. Linwood then closed in 1981 after PSA decided they didn’t need the aging Avenger anymore and after they’d slapped together a Peugeot 104-based Talbot Samba, made in France, to replace the Sunbeam.
Ryton, which was making Avengers until 1976, switched to making Alpines and, later, Horizons and Solaras.
For reference: ruclips.net/video/ocO30iiNWPo/видео.html
Any idea what Linwood is now ?
I wonder how long it will be before Stellantis stop manufacturing in the U.K. My Father's last two cars were U.K. made Peugeots but I think the second one was one of the last.
Interesting to know - thanks Jude!
The factory closed in 1981 and it devastated the local area.
I would love to have an Imp. the rear engine design is my favorite part.
The Imp is an engineers car, you have to know how to fix stuff.
You were right the first time around on political influence, but it was the fact that Lord William Rootes and his brother were generous donors to the Conservative Party. Sir William Rootes received his Baron title from PM Harold Macmillan and his govt in 1959(He was knighted a decade earlier for his WWII work). The generous government subsidy for the Scottish factory did flow from the closure of shipyards and Macmillan govt wouldn't permit a new factory to be built in Coventry. It was clearly a carrot and stick approach by Macmillan.
But then surely the Govt would have granted their request to build in Coventry?
@@LittleCar Since late 1930s with the building of shadow factories for aircraft and vehicle production right across the UK, the UK government had been highly interventionist in motor industrial policy and picking companies for projects. MacMillan was there throughout that period and had been Minister for Housing and L.G. prior, being highly interventionist in the market. It sounds odd today in a post Thatcher world, but govts did build towns and match industry with communities.
So much of Product and Manufacturing design relates to things which are fashionable or Trends, rather than functional, and beginning at the Boardroom and finance levels . . .
So many layers to a story such as this, from the VW type 1 inspiration for the format to the aluminum engine . . .
to the Suez Crisis of 56 ( I'll bet 95% of Americans today have never heard of the Suez Crisis) . . .
Many processes in life should begin with a Birdseye View, and progress from there : "What Business Are We In ?"
I worked at Cowley in 2002 - the weekend shift is mostly immigrants, and the management at the time was German. As soon as Longbridge management took over my section their attitude broke my enthusiastic, record output. I was sacked soon after the change. Management, not workers,, in my experience, were the problem.
I'm living my own 'sunk cost fallacy' right now with an old outboard motor I am trying to get running!
Always figured the Imp was trying to duplicate the Beetle success.
We've all been there!
The problem is that you can only use that label in retrospect - if you succeed, it doesn't apply, and the engineers get praised for their tenacity in solving the problems.
It’s important for everyone to feel as if they’re engaged in a success story. BMC had Alec Issigonas while Rootes did not and the difference in engineering and design meant that while BMC were riding the wave of success, Rootes were striving to make an inferior product, using inexperienced workers, far away from design and engineering facilities. Is it any wonder they failed.
Yet the Mini bankrupted every company that made it.
3:00 Earlier this week someone on a radio programme was saying that before the 1980s politics were far less confrontational. with far less difference between Labour and the Conservatives.
8:49 I believe that right from the start Sunderland has only had one Union and has tried to minimise the Workers vs Management attitude that caused so many problems in the 1970s.
p.s. Have you ever seen the film "Made in Dagenham" ? If not I'm sure you would enjoy it.
I've not only seen the film, but the West End musical as well! I thoroughly enjoyed it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Dagenham_(musical)
There's another big difference between Sunderland & Linwood - the management! British management in the 60s was very poor, largely run by the old boys network. Good job we've got past that eh ;-)
Hi Great video. Love the imp although never owned one.
I have worked on a couple and Driven them.
But Re Union power in Uk in 60 & 70's. Being a Printer and Having to Be a Union member. (E.g. Closed Shop.)
A Strike could be called at any moment, over any issue however small.
The F.O.C. or 'Father of the Chapel' ( Yes we were all Brothers, few Sisters at that time), In the N.G.A. (Shop Steward to most..!)
He would Call a Meeting, Blowing a Whistle, due to Noise from Presses..!
If the Sun was Shining, we would Walk out. And Woe Betide any who voted 'NO.!'
Most Nipping off to the Local Pub, to have a Few Pints, Grumble. Then head back to Sleep it off on Pallets, until problem Sorted. Sometimes an Hour, Shift, couple of Days or at worst in my Experience '6 Fudging Weeks'. ( with wife n New Mortgage to pay.)
Hence 1980 I came to Australia. And found a Friend Driving a bloody Imp..!!
Thanx for your efforts.
Cheers kim in Oz. 😎
Actually, the issue that Our Host puts with "commercially produced docs" (like the BBC one for the Hillman Imp) is that even as BBC has A BIGGER BUDGET to do research, YT Creators (like Our Host) tend to be MORE FOCUSED (even if they don't know about the subject at han before) on their research and it shows.
So much that some professional doc creators (worldwide A&E and Discovery channels, PBS and even BBC are now finally offering most of their older stuff (when most professional producers had better quality than in 2022) on YT for free to compete against YT Channels, like Wendover Prod., Real Life Lore, It's History!, The History Guy and others, that actually do care in their research.
...and even some of those YT Creators have reached intro streaming, like Nebula, Curiosity Stream and Magellan TV for "more controversial issues" YT won't monetize their videos on.
(if it matters to the people, it has been evaluated and documented by a YT Creator already or is on his or her list already)
Interesting videos but I am disappointed by your focus on the apparent militancy of the unions and no mention of the competency of the management. If you look a little deeper it becomes clear that much of the woes of the British car industry in the time period fall at the feet of incompetent management and ridiculous and disconnected decision making. I agree that the decision to continue with the Imp is an excellent example of the sunk cost fallacy. But it wasn’t the unions blundering by persisting with a doomed project was it. In the period, the UK was still rife with class division and that in no small part influenced industrial relations. My experience in the UK more recently suggests it still hasn’t changed enough.
I do talk about this, but not explicitly calling them out. They decided to make a factory in Linwood without a good plan to solve production issues quickly. They decided to launch a car that was clearly not ready. They OK'ed a rear engine design without determining it wouldn't sell. They took way too long to develop the car. Like many instances of the British car industry, it's not one side you can point your finger at.
From my memories of my mother's Imp in Ireland & Denmark, It wasn't a very practical car. I seem to remember problems starting it and it broke down a few times. By the time they replaced it they were glad to see it go.
Clearly bad design choices and poor labour relations were a key problem in making this car.
I'd always thought of the Imp as being the Rootes groups answer to the VW Beetle (the irony that VW & Wolfsburg were offered to the Rootes group and they turned it down isn't lost on me) in that not only the layout but using as the main chassis member (like vw), which made them a favourite basis for bodyshell/kit cars (as a kid, i remember a neighbour having a Davrian kit car based on an imp) and didn't Bond 875 three wheelers use an imp powertrain?
The Blackberry was designed as competition to the iPhone, right?
The world the Imp was borne into had women staying at home and being full time wife-mums. Life was good. Sure they did not have the internet then, but quality of life was not bad despite protestations from boomers.
IMHO the Imp appealed to the same housewives that drove Japanese cars when they first arrived or European imports before that. Why would you buy an Imp when you could by a Datsun that came with electric windows, a stereo and extra fluffy seats? Oh, and a warranty?
@Retired Bore I was just trollling the timings, as if the Imp development had anything to do with BMC's plans.
The Blackberry was several years before iPhones and Android smartphones.
Would have liked to see the Zagato-styled Zimp model produced,good looking car
Interesting you chose to compare Sunderland Nissan factory because that started off in a similar situation with Xshipbuilders but a very different outcome
In the 1980s everyone from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher down was determined that the mistakes of the 1970s wouldn't be repeated. She certainly didn't believe in "Sunk Costs". In fact after the 523 strikes organised by Union Leader "Red Robbo" in 30 months at BL. I don't think Thatcher would have approved any more significant Government investment in a U.K. car company.
If the Nissan workers in Sunderland really wanted to keep their jobs, they should have voted remain. You may be right about the unions being awkward. The unions were formed to promote workers pay and conditions, unfortunately many union members were seduced by various ideologies which led to bad decisions and the debacle of 1984. Rant over. A friend had an imp, his view was that the head gasket was the major weakness. Green hermatite was his solution.
I was there when the Imp was launched and to me and my mates it was a "Gals car " right Cissy thing, unlike the Mint Cooper. Remember a Roots Salesman reply, when we asked him about Imps. "Well put it this way mate, we sell 'em !" They were very unreliable overheating was it not ?
No mention of Davrian or Clan!
Bought a 1966 Singer Chamois in 1975 for £150 which was reasonably reliable. Picked up a hitch hiker on the A34 who after a mile asked “this is a quiet car - is it foreign?”
My mum had two. You had to drive like a lunatic to get the rear end to hang out. The heater? Don’t ask.
I saw this video, and as a Corvair enthusiast. I believe this also happened with the Corvair. Chevrolet or GM made decisions that lead to the production of the Corvair. It turned into an expensive dead end for GM to make. I think it's cool that Corvairs exist but from a business standpoint a car like the Chevy II would have been a better choice. I guess from an emotional standpoint I'm glad they did the Corvair. Sometimes companies can make wonderful cars from what starts out to be a questionable concept.
Interesting that you suggest that unions were applying pressure to strike at Hillman. "Working for Ford" by Huw Beynon, a detailed study into industrial relations at the Ford Motor Company suggests the matter was quite the opposite, with the actual unions often supporting the proposals of the management while those on the shop floor were far more inclined to militancy. Perhaps that's a difference between the two firms, or perhaps it just depends on who you ask.
As with history, it's what people remember, and the truth could be very different. I got that information from personal recollections from factory workers there in a video I linked in the description. We would only know what was the actual truth if we were there.
Chrysler was also sinking fast at home in the late 70s.
I can recommend a great book,"Our Hillman Imp" by Paul Coulter.It doesnt go too deep into the Imp story,but its a great read nonetheless.
Linwoods plant is now loads of car dealerships ironically,although part of the factory remains as offices.Sadly Linwood the town has declined too...
Sunk cost fallacy ....sounds like the fascinating story of BMW F1 in 2008 when they were leading the world championship a year ahead of schedule ....but refused to change the plan ..leading to probably their only chance ever gone .....
Fascinating doc from Mobile chicane on the Tube ...check it out ...
I was always impressed by the Imp. I worked at a parts store that sold parts for British cars. We joked that Imp stood for internal missing parts. The Japanese should have built the Imp. Then it would have been remarkable. To bad it was Rootes that built the little car called Imp.
Labor put Michael Edwards in charge of BL. What does that say.
The Govt policy of relocating car plants to regional unemployment blackspots was a good one but fundamentally deeply flawed and never a success. Nissan Sunderland is one exception to that rule but I think the Japanese approach to things where everyone is important made the difference.
Interesting video! I just do not understand how things in the late 1960's or early 1970's were going so much better in West Germany or even in France.......
Well done on Hillman IMP vids, very interesting👍I would prefer mini over Hillman but like idea of his/her, there could be more offerings like Racing version or town n country which Chrysler offered.
the mini wasn't initially that popular.
Now you say it I vaguely remember that, so I thought I'd go and look for figures. In 1960 they sold over 100,000. www.aronline.co.uk/history/bmc-leyland-production-figures/
Riley produced a small sports car called an Imp in the mid 1930's .
The imp was a funny loking car even as a a kid in the 70's
The name surely came from the Singer Imp
It’s fascinating fact that Chrysler Europe division was taken over by PSA Groupe, decades later Fiat and Chrysler join forces then more recently join PSA Groupe once more (Now Stellantis) I wonder what it’s fate is going to be 🤔
Here is what Gboard pulls up for "Imp": 👿 😂😂😂
What about the Singer Chamois?
The Sunderland Nissan factory is presumably managed by Japanese people. That’s a lot different from the haughty British management style of the 60s and 70s.
I had a singer chamois coupe in ascot grey spent a fortune on it tuning it with 998 engine race head webber carb janspeed manifold Hartwell lowered suspension would rev to 9000 r17 cam tufrided crank wills rings all expensive bits, fun to drive but so unrelible and 25mpg sold it and bought a ford escort 1100.mk1 I could not believe how reliable a car could be , just put fuel in and drive it . IF ONLY
If you hadn't messed around with the Chamois so much, it could have been as reliable as my mother's. Still, you were lucky to find the only reliable Mk1 Escort Fix Or Repair Daily.
This is the BBC!!! - BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY , The Movie 🍿🎥🍿
Don't know much about the briefly mentioned Humber.....
You perfectly described brexit....
I actually think the Imp looked modern and not inferior to the Mini in terms of style, and the large amount of glass also gave good all around view to the drivers and passengers. Mini’s reliability wasn’t that superior to the Imp either. The downfall of Imp was of course a combination of the weird rear engine arrangement handicapping some level of practicality, poor promotion (can’t they get some mini skirted ladies to spearhead the advertising?), and maybe harder to work on than a Mini. A missed opportunity I would say.
I agree. I don't think the styling was bad.
Of course BMC had issues with making the Mini for the low price they sold it at, which of course put Rootes under pressure to keep their prices low, which meant everyone raced to the bottom and went bankrupt.
@Retired Bore Since when has either 2 versions of the Renault Twingo been rear engined???
Like government projects then, will cost more to stop and put it right than carry on it and sell it as is.
You don’t talk about the manage manipulation ie when production was up they would sack a man to create a strike.
The sunk cost fallacy. Also known as, throwing good money after bad
Indeed
You know that in Germany, British Leyland was often called "British Elend" ("Elend" is German for miserable and rhymes with Leyland) for all the known reasons but Chrysler managed to f'up things pretty well, too. As you had mentioned the Sunbeam you could also do an episode about the Horizon which should be pretty interesting for the fact that it was rather unsuccessful in Europe but sold good in the US where it was produced as Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon until 1990, three years longer than the production run in Europe.
And...at least for the European models, Chrysler and Peugeot managed to f'up again. 😉
I'm sure I'll do the Horizon at some point (and the Alpine).
Love your videos but you do seem to often focus on problems calling them ‘union problems’ , the problems were ‘management problems’ at least as much, gives your otherwise excellent videos a bit of a Daily Mail slant
There is a bit of bias in there, but I try not to have bias, just to present the facts. I do call out many management problems in these videos. However, Rootes weren't having problems with labour disputes in Coventry, and they had the same management structure. I personally see the "union problem" in Linwood not with workers, but with the three competing unions who were vying for prominence in a new factory, and promising they could get the workers all kinds of great things.
I also think unions can be a great power for good (zero hour contracts, working conditions for Amazon warehouse workers).
@@LittleCar thanks for reply, as I said, brilliant videos, please keep them coming 👍
I think it's a little unfair to maintain that Rootes should have cancelled the Imp project in 1959 and waited until they could produce a frontwheel drive car. Actually when you look across Europe rear-engined cars were doing quite well in the sixties. Think about the Renault 8 and 10, Simca 1000, Fiat 850 and many others - not to forget the old VW Beetle (that wasn't replaced until the mid-seventies). Add to this that frontwheel drive cars was rather complicated for factories to manufacture. Witness the fact that even VW had to market a small volume "sportscar", the Scirocco, before they had built up the knowhow to launch the worldbeating Golf, Volvo did the same thing with the 480, and even BMW has bought into the Mini to get knowhow to produce a frontwheel drive car.
It is clear with 60 years of hindsight that wrong decisions were taken, but it wasn't a no-brainer that the project would fail. Actually I knew people back in the day who preferred the rearengined Imp to any frontwheel drive car - and it had the folding rear seat and opening rear window for shopping.
Rear wheel drive cars sold OK in Europe, but not in the UK - the Imp's main market, and I reference the poll at the time that showed Brits didn't like rear-engined cars. Yes, hindsight is great, and clearly now FWD was the way to go, and you can certainly argue that wasn't clear in 1959. But no matter what they did with the engineering, clearly Rootes got the car wrong when it launched as it sold so poorly despite a big fanfare at launch.
Have our British friends finally learned the folly of letting politicians stick their noses into major industry choices? I hope so, but I don't know. Are they still interfering?
Were there external forces trying to destabilize the entire country ? Then l00king my English & Irish r00ts & remembered that I AM MY OWN WORST ENEMY
Easy to blame the Linwood workforce (and the wicked unions!) Maybe poor management was part of the problem as well?
They struck because the pie vending machine was broken!
Did rhe name Imp, as in impotent hurt sales? I could see it being the but of jokes and people not wanting one for that reason alone.
I think it was a different time.
I have always thought of Imp, Elf, and Pixie (a name Nissan has used recently) as being pretty much the same thing.
I was thinking about some American car names recently. Does the Nissan Rogue (called the Juke in the U.K.) mug you and steal your wallet ? Is the Honda Fit (called the Jazz in the U.K.) epileptic ?
It must be very difficult thinking of a name that suits all countries.
MSM crap, as usual, you do the research and give us the results, in a much better way.
There was a sports style glass fibre version of the imp that came along, but built by third party Ginetta as the G15.
You mentioned other imp based vehicles and surprised you didn't mention the G15!
Indeed. I have been scratching my head over the name of that vehicle, but kept being side-tracked by the Gilbern Invader for some reason.
I think I was aware of it when I did research (back in mid-June), but you have to stop somewhere, and this only took the major parts from the Imp (not the chassis).
The Centaur kits / the probe derivatives do not have a chassis. See, the Imp is nothing but a lower steel tub, a bolt-on rear frame thing where the trailing arms hang on and the gearbox front mount. The dampers are mounted on the steel tub, and the front axle halves are bolted on below the tank by L shaped parts. What the Adams + Peter Timpson did was to throw away the Imp‘s steel tub and cast their own futuristic glassfibre „bathtub“, and bolted on these parts in the same manner as on the Imp. There is no chassis no nothing, its just a plastic bathtub with bolted on axles and parts. My Centaur kit is now on my car lift, above my Unimog, and every time I work on the Mog I walk under Centaur… mail me for pictures if needed.
just seen your video....great presentation..... may be mentioned in other comments but no mention of the Clan Crusader as another version....and a rally winner (Isle of Mull)?
The reason why the factory was not built in Coventry was because of the Distribution of Industry Act(s). This was to move industry from the West Midlands to areas with industries that were doing well and had full employment to regions that had declining industries such as Wales, the North East and North West England and Scotland. There was a prohibition, especially in Birmingham, on building factories and offices. The aim was to reduce the population of Birmingham from 1.1 million to less than a million. The Distribution of Industry acts applied throughout the UK, but there was a specific focus on Birmingham.
Rootes had space behind it Coventry factory to build the new Imp factory but could not get the necessary development licence. Many other factories were moved from the Midlands to other areas, Ford to Bridgend, Rover to Cardiff etc.
Whilst distributing industry in this way may be a good idea politically to soak up unemployment, it does not help if employment is taken away from an area that has been successfully making the product, increasing the cost of the product.
If only this bunch of Tories thought similarly
Unions and Labour Governments ruined all manufacturing in this country and now they are back 😢😢😢
Little Car videos are consistantly excellent, but the emphasis placed on union issues here is a display of one-sided stereotyping. In more successful countries like Germany or Japan, there isn't the antagonistic and adversarial attitude from the management, unlike British companies. Volkswagen, for instance, welcomes cooperation with the unions and their members because they realize a harmonious relationship is better for consistant production. The class system (Us vs. Them) was very much alive and a part of British industry in the period discussed here, please keep that in mind. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
Whenever two sides decide to fight instead of cooperate, it doesn't end well. You can see that from countries to political parties, to unions and management.
I've been waiting for this. The Imp was a brilliant car and an automotive weapon. Shame it was put to rest by a bolshy workforce.
BBC is not what it used to be Big Car ....why we all watch RUclips and you mate ....
The original Miata designers were inspired by the coupe
Striking over a pie vending machine that has stopped working is the most British thing ever, and perhaps the explanation of how some people could like Margaret Thatcher. Mind boggling stuff.
I think I should take you to task on your union bashing, I'm not saying the Unions were all sunshine and sweetness, but the real issues were useless bosses who couldn't organise the proverbial. Most were ex public school/grammer school who paid themseves very highly and thought of the workforce as a pile of disease. In the 1980's I did a thesis on the troubles of the 70's and it became very clear that pay increases invariably lagged price rises by three months, and those price increases and inflation in general came about from 3 specific incidences. Firstly decimilisation started the ball rolling when profteering from it went through the roof. Imagine a penny sweet for the little ones, 1 old penny became 1 new penny, 2.4 times the value. OK many penny sweets became half a new penny, still a 20% price hike, and so it went on, did we ger a 20% pay raise to compensate, the hell we did, so everything becam at least 20% dearer or more. Secondly we joined the EEC(EU). I also found papers relating to our being accepted, the standout statement therein was "Great Britain must not compete with France, Germany and any other Industrial member State in manufactured Goods" Now you know the real reason for the closures of all our factories. We sold ourselves to the Devil, and we were'nt offered the chance to vote on it. Lastly the 1973 Oil Crisis.
For gods sake get over your anti EEC /EU rants!
Mainstream media fake news? No way!! =p