From The Times (of London) :
February 29 2000
Engineering the Imp that gave drivers the hump
Peter Ware, automotive engineer, was born on May 14, 1918. He died aged
81
PETER WARE was chief designer of the Hillman Imp, the small car launched
by the Rootes Group in 1963 as a riposte to the BMC's Mini. Although not
as compact as the Issigonis classic, the Imp had the same aim of
delivering the maximum amount of space in a vehicle which was light on
fuel and easy to park.
The two-door saloon had a rear-mounted aluminium overhead camshaft
engine and all-round independent suspension. The boldness of the design,
however, was undermined by production problems. The Imp was built at the
new Linwood factory near Glasgow, established far from Rootes's
traditional Midlands base under a government policy of trying to bring
work to areas of high unemployment.
But with a workforce recruited largely from the former Clyde shipyards
and with no experience of car manufacture, Linwood was dogged by labour
disputes. The Imp not only failed to reach its sales potential but
developed a poor reputation for quality and reliability. The original
aim was to build 150,000 cars a year but only 440,000 had been made
before production ceased in 1976.
As Rootes's chief executive engineer, Ware led a team which was
responsible for a rapid expansion of the car range, the Imp being
followed by the Hillman Hunter and Avenger models. By the standards of
the Imp, however, those were conventional designs and in engineering
terms less distinguished.
During the 1960s Rootes was taken over by Chrysler. Ware became
increasingly unhappy at the new management style and in 1966 he left to
join Dunlop. Here he headed the successful wheel division, as well as
working on a pioneering high-intensity natural gas burner and an
anti-skid system for commercial vehicles.
Peter Ware was the son of Sydney Ware, who had patented one of the first
carburettors and died while testing a racing car when Peter was four. At
14 he joined the Royal Navy as a cadet at Dartmouth and after passing
out he joined the Navy's engineering college.
Invalided out of the Navy in 1939 he joined the Bristol Aeroplane
Company, where he worked on improving the engine for the Hercules
bomber. Moving with his boss, Sir Roy Fedden, to Whitehall, he was then
appointed technical secretary to the committee on motor torpedo boats
and after the war joined Fedden's engineering company.
After a spell farming in Somerset, Ware returned to the motor industry
in the 1950s, working for Leyland and CAV on fuel injection sys- tems
and diesel engines before joining Rootes in 1958.
He is survived by his wife and three children.
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