Saw one of these little cars at the nearby Haynes Motor Museum. It brought back memories. I was in theological college training in the 1970s and as part of the course, ten ordinands, including me, were dispatched to Cumbrian villages. There we stayed with parishioners, where we were meant to imbibe the the country culture of small village communities. Two of us stayed in the house of a church member, an elderly widowed woman, who was hospitable and kind. She lent her Hillman Imp to us and we drove around the fells making visits to farmers in the area. The steering was snappy, and the driver sat perched over the steering wheel, with a good view of the road over the short bonnet. The car was powered with a rear engine. It was fun to drive, as the makers intended, but even then, the metal work was fast rusting, and it looked like a vehicle which wouldn't last long, especially on rough lanes in the fells. One of the men at the museum laughed as he remembered how, as a uni student, he'd driven one on the M6 and the vehicle, at faster speeds, would drift disconcertingly across the lanes of the M6.
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