Westfield Elevens

I've just found out that the Imp engine block, an aluminium derivitave of the good old Coventry Climax, was made by the company where I work . There is one knocking about in our showroom, I had presumed that it was a modern block from the design but when I picked it up (it weighs next to nothing, lighter than the A Series head!) it has Rootes cast into it so I asked around. If you were into lightening the car in a big way this engine would be a good start, unfortunately it was only 875cc so probably be somewhat down on power.

They did a 998cc version too. Can be developed into quite a screamer, but is fragile. And, of course, parts less widely available than the A Series. A good route if you want something closer to the Climax engine and are not too worried about performance.

Both Chesman Engineering and Corley Conversions are a couple of miles from me. Both where/are/still are? big in imp engine tuning field and sell endless bits to extract more power from the engine.

Seem to remember you had to put a lot of goodies on to get it up to what still seems like a modest power output by todays standards (100+bhp maybe) , with the esoteric versions getting up to maybe 120bhp but being very expensive. Although as you say, light with it.

I don't know, in the end, just how removed from the climax the final imp engine actually was, but there is a paper the Imp club have on their website detailing the whole process: http://www.imps4ever.info/tech/kuzmicki.html

They give some details on the block production - is that the bit your company did?

Yes, we did the first 250,000 blocks. Just seen on the website, the fully machined block weighs 9.6kg!