The Imp Site

Imp Pick-up

One pick-up Imp has been built by the Rootes Experimental/ Competition Department. Based on a De Luxe Imp, it may have been a design exercise with the U.S. market in mind. It may be registered LBW, which is Oxfordshire.

It was first owned by a Mr. John Panks, who lived in Swalcliffe (next door to a garage where a Mr. Boyce used to work, who remembers it well).
At the time Mr. Panks was the manager of Sales & Services for the Rootes Group in North America. He gave it to his wife as a birthday present (it may even have been built for this purpose).

It features a number of non-standard items, such as

There was an advert for an Imp pick-up in Exchange & Mart, under the heading Collectors Cars. (1979? 1980?)
The advert stated that it was a prototype.
The address was in Ireland, and the price £750.

  Graham Foy in his Pick-up Imp in 1991
Graham Foy in his Pick-up Imp in 1991
Practical Classics of March 1991 featured the then owner of the pick-up: Mr. Graham Foy, who lived in East Kilbride in Scotland. He bought the car for £115, after it was advertised in an evening newspaper as "Hillman Imp pick-up, only factory one ever made". He managed to get the original logbook and letters from Mr. Panks (who has since passed away), so the authenticity seems to be confirmed.

Another new Imp variant? / John Goodberry, Banbury, Oxfordshire. - Impressions 2000, May


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Frank Schoenberger's Sunbeam Farm Imp
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