Although the car was sold in large numbers in England - and attempts were made to export it abroad - the Imp was seen as a 'Scottish' car at least in Scotland. The Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the plant in October 1963 when he drove the first production Hillman Imp (which is now in the Transport Museum in Glasgow). Thus a factory in Linwood near Paisley and 14 miles west of Glasgow (across the road from a pressed-steel plant and not too far from the steel manufacturing plant at Ravenscraig in Lanarkshire) came into being. But instead of expanding in their English factories in Coventry, the British government (full of ideas about how commerce and industry should manage their businesses) persuaded Rootes to build in the unemployment black spot of the West of Scotland. To manufacture the new car, the company needed a bigger manufacturing plant. Perhaps as an unintended prediction of the car's unreliability, the car had a wheel brace which could be used as a hand starter if the electrics failed! Known internally within Rootes as the 'Apex', the Imp was intended as a rival to the Mini. The Coventry-based Rootes Group developed such a new car with a number of unique features - an aluminium alloy engine, positioned at the rear and angled at 45 degrees instead of vertically. This was the era of the first Morris Mini, a small car capable of carrying a small family. In the aftermath of the fuel shortage caused by the Suez crisis in 1956, European car manufacturers rushed to create small cars which used less fuel.

Hillman imp