MANY historians pinpoint the Suez fiasco as the precise moment Britain lost its status as a top tier world power. Before the ill-advised invasion of Egypt, Britain still had an Empire and children were still taught that we had won the war (with a modicum of help from those Johnny-come-lately Americans).

Afterwards, we were left with a return to petrol rationing and no illusions about our place in the world. Although Britain had been struggling to hold on to its Empire before the Middle East fiasco (having lost India, the jewel in the crown, in 1947) the events of Suez were truly the beginning of the end.

But every cloud has a silver lining. The sudden scarcity of petrol concentrated the brightest minds in the British motor industry and led to a new generation of small, fuel-efficient cars.

The pressing need for smaller cars led eventually to the creation of the Mini, arguably the finest car ever built in this country. The British Motor Corporation couldn’t have been happier (at least until its accounts department worked out the paltry profit made on every one sold).

For the Rootes Group, however, it led directly to hell.

Hillman’s parent company had been toying with a small car before the Suez crisis but things hadn’t been going well (the project engineer, Michael Parks, dubbed the first prototype ‘The Slug’ because it was so slow and incredibly ugly). After Suez, the project moved up a gear and Parks was told to come up with something bolder and altogether more attractive.

Parks and his team were highly skilled but, rather like the Suez crisis that begat it, the Hillman small car project was a monumental cock-up.

What could be bolder (or more bonkers) than using a racing car engine in a shopping car supposedly aimed at mums? Sure, the 875cc all-aluminium Coventry Climax power plant was redesigned and detuned but, production line build quality being what it was in 1960s Britain, going with such an advanced design was a huge gamble.

There were other, more obvious, problems. Keen to cash in on the glamour of American gas guzzlers the styling department took its lead from the Chevrolet Corvair (itself later named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 worst cars of all time) to the detriment of the interior packaging.

Hillman opted for a rear-engine/rear drive layout to mimic chic European designs but, by the time the Imp appeared, everyone knew the Mini’s front engine/front drive design was the future.

Then the politicians intervened.

Rootes wanted to expand its Coventry factory to build the new Imp but the Government wouldn’t pony up the cash needed unless the group agreed to build a new factory in Linwood, near Glasgow, where unemployment was through the roof.

To the horror of people who knew better, Rootes was facing an impending disaster: a new factory, an untested (and belligerent) workforce and a new model which used a fragile race-inspired engine.

The Linwood plant was scheduled to open in May 1963 and the Imp’s final development was rushed to meet the deadline. Within months drivers were besieging Rootes dealerships with tales of overheating, dodgy automatic chokes, leaky doors and water pump failures.

Alex Webster of Darlington was typical. Keen to fly the flag for the domestic motor industry he bought an Imp… and wished he hadn’t. In the space of a few months it required a new clutch, a water pump, a choke assembly and a thermostat. The following year it needed another clutch, a third water pump and an auto choke (which was eventually swapped for a manual conversion). Shortly after, the car failed its MoT because the sills had rotted through.

Noise from the gearbox and a grumbling wheel bearing were the final straw. “Regretfully, I lowered the Union Jack and bought a foreigner,” said Alex.

There were other variants – lots of them – and some were rather interesting, such as the sporty Sunbeam model. My dad had one of those and I still remember the head gasket blowing on the A1. We had to stop every 30 miles and scramble down the embankment to ladle water out of a ditch and into a flask to fill the radiator. The same thing happened on a holiday to Torquay. When our steaming heap pulled into the hotel forecourt the doorman asked (rather impolitely): “Are you staying here sir?”

Of course, the cheeky little Imp is remembered with greater affection these days. There is a club for owners and a thriving classic scene.

Those that have survived have done rather better than the Rootes Group which was forced into a marriage with Chrysler before Imp production finally ground to a halt in 1976.