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HillMan Motor Cars |
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Linwood in Renfrewshire, ScotlandThe remaining buildings at Linwood were being demolished during 1996. They started with the main assembly shed, and took down the adjoining engine/gearbox shed early '97. The main assembly line control panel, which remained intact until May 1996 or so, was removed complete, by the Glasgow Transport Museum, who wanted to re-construct it somewhere... probably at the Transport Museum at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. September / October 1996 a TV production company shot a
documentary for BBC Scotland's Art & Popular culture series
Ex-S about the story/history of the Imp and Linwood. Some of the
filming took place in and around the old Linwood site: the last
chance to film Imps at their birthplace. It isn't your average documentary, not businesslike, but maybe
deliberate amateurish. It's kind of bittersweet. It gives the
fond memories as well as the regrets and the anger; interviewing
different people involved in building the Imp. Portraying the
present state of Imp affairs several Scots give their opinion of
what the(ir) Imps mean to the Scottish and/or themselves. Many
scenes include the Imp that Highland Printmakers of Inverness
bought and had converted into a work of art. It's bright blue and
(for one thing) has silver antlers. It's remarkable, like the
programme itself, which I would call an unusual piece of
journalism, featuring many aspects of the Imp. The debate over the production plant site (Glasgow -Linwood versus Merseyside or other English depressed areas. By 1962, Rootes had injected £23,000,000 into this plant near Glasgow just to make the little Imp. An overhead cam motor is expensive to make. In less than twelve months the contractors had got up two
production blocks each covering 324,000 sqare feet, as well as
building the die-casting plant. By December 1962 all the offices,
canteens and the rest was ready. By January the whole million
sqare foot project was finished. The whole affair floated on
giant concrete rafts supported by 2000 concrete-and-steel piles. The target rate was 150,000 Imps a year. |