by David Finlay (04 Oct 02)

I can't think of many conversations which have been interrupted as often as the one I had with Clark Dawson. There we were, chatting away in a rally service area, and after every third sentence (or so it seemed) someone else would come up, stare at the car we were sitting beside and say, "That looks like one of the works rally Imps."

It was difficult to object to this, because they were all competitors in the Historic section of the event themselves, and it was good to see such enthusiasm. Better still to see their jaws drop as Clark explained that the car doesn't just look like a works rally Imp, it actually is one.

FRW 308C was built as a Hillman Imp in 1965 and was one of the team cars used in 1966 for international events. Tony Lewis won his class with it in the Tulip Rally that year, while Peter Harper (famous for his exploits in Sunbeam Rapiers, and later one of the most successful drivers in the newly invented sport of rallycross) drove it in the Alpine Rally, though he had to retire.

The car was then used for testing purposes at Bagshot in Surrey, and very quickly got to the point where it had to be re-shelled. This was common at a time when rally cars used pretty much standard shells, and roll cages were there purely for safety and contributed almost nothing to the strength of the structure.

As well as getting a new shell and various updated parts, FRW 308C also got a new set of badges. Imps were sold in the UK as Hillmans or as Sunbeams, but in Europe they were always known as Sunbeams, so it made sense for the works rally cars to be called that too. Under this name, the car was driven in 1967 by Rosemary Smith, who scored class wins on the Circuit of Ireland at Easter time and the Scottish Rally in the summer. Smith used another Imp on the Alpine, but FRW 308C went to that event too, where it was used as a recce and support car.

Lost To View

In December 1967 the Imp was sold to a French driver, who used it on the following month's Monte Carlo Rally but seems to have retired. Current owner Clark Dawson is not sure what happened to it over the next thirty-odd years, but it somehow ended up in a scrapyard in Paris. Michel Blanchard bought it, took it home to Geneva, and then advertised it in the UK at a national meeting of the Imp Club, which is where Clark first heard that the car still existed.

After a lot of talking, a plan was devised whereby Clark would buy the car and restore it for Rosemary Smith, who is still very active in Historic rallying. That fell through, but Clark decided to buy it anyway, which he did in October 2001.

"I'm just a welder, a 'Fred in a shed'," is how Clark modestly describes himself - he works for a company which does vehicle repairs for Consignia - but he is also a very talented restorer with a lot of Imp experience. He did not start on the car until February 4, but within a week he had stripped the shell (a process which included removing evidence that several generations of mice had lived in it) and had it powder coated. Continuing at this very rapid pace, he had the car running again in July, and promptly started using it for commuting to work!

During the rebuilding process he had found all sorts of tricks that the works teams used. The front wishbones, for example, look completely normal when they're fitted, but when he was stripping the car Clark found that they had been strengthened internally - to such an extent, in fact, that there is effectively another set of wishbones inside the standard ones. Not quite what the rule makers had in mind, but also very difficult for a scrutineer to spot . . .

When I saw the car, it looked both beautiful and very original. The roof had been damaged quite badly - possibly because another car had been put on top of it in the Paris scrapyard - but Clark had done a fine job of repairing both this and several other defects such as rotten sills.

As-New Components

As for the originality, he reports that an amazing proportion of the car is exactly as it was when the works sold it 35 years ago. The Minilite wheels have not been changed, the front seats are the same, and items such as the clutch, brake drums and wheel cylinders - none of them replaced since the car was retrieved from Paris - are in as-new condition, in some cases date-marked December 1967 (which suggests that the works overhauled the car before selling it, and also that it was not used for any other competition work after the '68 Monte).

The four spotlights which used to dominate the front of the car were long gone by the time it was retrieved from Paris, so replacements had to be found. A friend of a friend had a set, and as Clark was completing the deal he asked where they had come from. The owner, who had no interest in Imps himself and did not know about the restoration project, said that they came from an Imp that Andrew Cowan had rallied in the 1960s. This was the same Andrew Cowan who now runs the Mitsubishi Ralliart WRC operation, and the Imp he rallied just happened to be one of the sister cars to this one, registered FRW 307C!

The close-ratio gearbox is not the one the car used in its first events, but was taken from the later JDU 46E (the works ran the car with this box, so it can be considered authentic). The engine, which produces around 80bhp from 998cc, is basically original apart from the block; Clark fitted a new block because the correct one was damaged, but once he has fixed it he'll be putting it back in. The same applies to the front shock absorbers, which also need some work.

Super-Authentic Condition

Once those parts are replaced, Clark reckons that more than 90% of the car will be as it was the last time the team saw it. This makes it not only by far the most authentic surviving works Imp (there is no other one in existence known to have an original bodyshell, for example) but almost certainly the most historically accurate works rally car of the 60s, and probably the 70s, and conceivably the 80s, and just possibly even the 90s.

Ironically, the reason for this is almost certainly the fact that the car was abandoned in France and left untouched for over thirty years. If it had stayed in the UK, somebody would almost certainly have started using it for Historic rallying by now (Clark refuses to do this, though he is not shy about putting miles on it and is more than happy to use it for demonstrations).

Parts would inevitably have become damaged through competition use and had to be replaced, and there would undoubtedly have been a strong temptation to fit a wilder cam, bigger carburettors, a full-race gearbox and all sorts of other bits and pieces that would have made the car quicker but eroded its authenticity.

As Clark says, "if the car had stayed in the UK, everything would have been changed - the car would not exist in its original state."

He prefers FRW 308C to be a true artefact of professional motorsport in the 1960s, which it certainly is. He was also very pleased when Rosemary Smith (pictured below with Clark) flew over from Ireland to see the car, and to drive it on the fine roads near Clark's home in north-east England. Anyone who knows Imps and their wonderul engine note, and who is aware of Smith's ability as a driver, will not be surprised to learn that almost every gear change she made could be heard from several miles away.

Smith's drive was the climax of a fabulous restoration project, though it would not be appropriate for her to use such a historically important car in competition. But Clark is in the process of building her a replica for use in Historic rallies - and that's something a lot of people would love to see.

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