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aeronca65t
Great Pumpkin
Offline
One of my racing friends, John S. lives in Quebec and owns two Ginettas. He's an ex-pat Brit who owns a business related to wine-processing.
John lets another pal Rick, race his second Ginetta in exchange for storage of the cars at Rick's place in Pennsylvania (plus, I think, some financial arangement). They do most of their racing in the US.
They have a third friend, Ross, who also keeps his Ginnetta at Rick's places. Ross lives in London, England and flies over to the US for our races.
Apparently it's cheaper to race in the US, even including the extra cost of an occasional airline ticket. :shocked:
So we have three of these little buzz-bombs to contend with in our small-bore races. They are great guys and fun to race with.
Anyway, I was talking with John recentley and asked him about the engines in these cars. They are all the rear-engine Ginettas with engines from Sunbeam/Hillman Imps.
And I asked him about the "connection" of the Imp engine to the Coventry-Climax engine.
I've had lots of folks tell me they are 'the same", but they don't exactly look the same to me.
But in fact, John told me that the two engines don't have a single, interchangeable part.
The myth of their "identical" relationaship was because the fellow who designed the Imp engine was "inspired" by the Coventry-Climax engine and sought to create a newer engine with many of the same good features of the original little, aluminum firepump motor. And he was able to review the original engineering drawings of the CC. So in that sense one might say the Imp is "derived" from the firepump engine.
By the way, the lead designer of the Imp engine was Mike Parkes, who is also well known as a former Ferrari driver (in both F1 and sports cars).
John also pointed out that when Rootes went bankrupt (during the time that Chrylser owned it) Peugeot bought off most of the Rootes inventory including the Imp engine tooling. Peugeot continued to build the Imp engine (for one of their small cars) until the late '90s, so there are still many spare parts for the Imp engines available via Peugeot. Also, as a result, John says that complete used Imp/Peugeot engines are available quite cheaply in the UK or Europe. *That* must be why he seems to shift his at 9000 rpm with careless abandon!
Interesting.....
John lets another pal Rick, race his second Ginetta in exchange for storage of the cars at Rick's place in Pennsylvania (plus, I think, some financial arangement). They do most of their racing in the US.
They have a third friend, Ross, who also keeps his Ginnetta at Rick's places. Ross lives in London, England and flies over to the US for our races.
Apparently it's cheaper to race in the US, even including the extra cost of an occasional airline ticket. :shocked:
So we have three of these little buzz-bombs to contend with in our small-bore races. They are great guys and fun to race with.
Anyway, I was talking with John recentley and asked him about the engines in these cars. They are all the rear-engine Ginettas with engines from Sunbeam/Hillman Imps.
And I asked him about the "connection" of the Imp engine to the Coventry-Climax engine.
I've had lots of folks tell me they are 'the same", but they don't exactly look the same to me.
But in fact, John told me that the two engines don't have a single, interchangeable part.
The myth of their "identical" relationaship was because the fellow who designed the Imp engine was "inspired" by the Coventry-Climax engine and sought to create a newer engine with many of the same good features of the original little, aluminum firepump motor. And he was able to review the original engineering drawings of the CC. So in that sense one might say the Imp is "derived" from the firepump engine.
By the way, the lead designer of the Imp engine was Mike Parkes, who is also well known as a former Ferrari driver (in both F1 and sports cars).
John also pointed out that when Rootes went bankrupt (during the time that Chrylser owned it) Peugeot bought off most of the Rootes inventory including the Imp engine tooling. Peugeot continued to build the Imp engine (for one of their small cars) until the late '90s, so there are still many spare parts for the Imp engines available via Peugeot. Also, as a result, John says that complete used Imp/Peugeot engines are available quite cheaply in the UK or Europe. *That* must be why he seems to shift his at 9000 rpm with careless abandon!
Interesting.....
