From: nyclewit(at)nyhp03.serigate.philips.nl
Subject: introduction
Yetanother....
I'm Bert Clewits 35 years old and electronic enigeer designing
chips for Philips at Nijmegen here in Holland.
Anyway my first contact with Rootes cars was when my dad bought
his Hillman Minx back in '66 from my uncle who was Rootes dealer at
that time.
What a car ! nice tartan red with black interior.
He drove that car for ten years and I fondly remember our holidays in
France, Germany and Spain.
After ten years he thought of buying a new car a Mazda anyway he
regretted that later so he bought a Hillman Imp from my uncle in '77
The Imp was ment as shopping car for my mother but you know...
The new Mazda ended up in the garage and he was using the Imp instead
that all started it.
Now we got about 9 Imps and variants an Alpine and a Jaguar XJ6 series I.
All of them are restored over the past 20 years.
Probably the reason I'm still single, ha ! ha !
(Oh forgot the Mazda was a waist of time, we got 10 years out of
that one with extreme difficulty the tin worm got it in the end)
The Alpine was bought as a restoration object 13 years ago, and it was no
more then a heap, for a price were in California you can buy a driveable
one apperantly (You don't know how lucky you are guy's)
Anyway we replaced the floor, outrigger ends valances front and back
boot floor, sills and innersills, window frame, bottom half of the doors
bonnet front etc.etc. most of it replaced by home made panelwork otherwise
it would have been too expensive.
So luckily it came back on the road in time for my cousins wedding last year
and has covered many miles also in Britain to the SAOC international weekend
which was fun as well as the international of The Imp Club, of which
I'm a member.
The nice thing about British cars is that it's the best way of getting
to know how a car works, you can take it apart up to the very last bit
(and put it back together again of course).
Just ask a repair man in a Jap garage to rebuilt your carburettor and
he'll surely messes thing up as they only do window and vacuum cleaning !
I'm driving a Sunbeam Imp (Chamois version) daily also in winter.
Sometimes I assist some modern tin owners to get their cars started especially
now with the minus 16 degr C.
Best wishes for the new year and happy Alpining and or Imping in '97
Bert Clewits
'64 Alpine S IV GT OD moonstone white
and a couple of Imps
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:32:20 CDT