[alfa] RE: BL etc

["John Fielding" <johnf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

I just looked up the chronological period when Jaguar was incorporated into the British
Leyland empire, previously known as BMC, British Motor Corporation.  Jaguar was
very down at heel due to financial mismanagement and was snapped up by British
Leyland Motor Holdings.  Therefore the correct name was BLMH and not BL.
BLMH came about due to an injection of public cash to bring together Morris, Austin,
Rover, Triumph and later MG.

The group that owned Jaguar also owned Coventry Climax (Rubery-Owen) who by
this time had ceased its involvement with racing engine design and turned to more
mundane engine designs.  One of these was to develop a lightweight engine to power
a water pump for the British Fire Brigade.  This engine/pump combination  had to
develop 100 HP and be light enough to be carried by 2 people.  The engine was
known as the FWP, being short for "Feather-Weight-Pump" and was the basis for
engine later used in the Hillman Imp rear engine RWD car as the FWV meaning
"Feather-Weight-Vehicle".  The design was a 4C in-line 1100cc SOHC engine
all alloy construction with bucket tappets the same as the AR 4C engine.  The
only problem was the engine was mounted at a 45 degree angle longitudially in
the rear of the car and to set the tappet clearance, it used shims, to get the
cam cover off and remove the camshaft meant lowering or removing the engine and
transaxle unit which took several hours to accomplish.

The Imp was a common "rust-bucket" and quickly went out of production, today they are very
rare and much sort after by collectors.

They had a limited period when they were competitively raced in British Saloon cars
formulae, James Hunt cut his teeth on a Hillman Imp prepared by his life time friend Lord
Hesketh and he raced against Jim Clark in the Lotus Cortina prepared by Colin Chapman and
Jackie Stewart in a Ken Tyrell prepared car in the BSCC series.  The French Renault
Dauphine was a similar design and also rare these days.  Rootes Group, who owned Hillman,
was bought out by Chrysler who already owned the French Simca company and the Imp was
rebadged as a Simca to try and bolster its flagging popularity, the Simca model was (IIRC)
called the Stilletto.  Another model name used by the Rootes Group was Humber and the
Hillman Hunter was also sold as a Humber, Humber being an up-market version.  The
top-of-the-range Hillman version was the Hunter GLS which I owned two of.  This had a
Holby Engineering modified 1750cc push-rod OHV engine with twin 40DCOE's and developed 120
HP, the engine was known as H-120.  Here in RSA the Hillman Hunter was sold with the
Peugeot SOHC engine, Peugeot being part of the Chrysler empire at the time.

The Coventry Climax  FWV  SOHC engine later was developed into several racing versions
when C.C. realised they had a winner on its hands.

John
Durban
South Africa
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