An aquaintence of mine did his aprenticeship at Climax, I'm not entirely sure of the whole story or how much of the 'legend' is true, but goes something like this, while Harry Weslake and Lord Lyons were doing fiore watch duty over Coventry they dreamed up the Jag straight six twin-cam they started using in the XK120 after the war, renaming Swallow & Swift 'Jaguar' as the 'SS' name was slightly tarnished by the previouse six years events......
Edward Turner, meanwhile, had had his factory bombed out, but been given new facilities in a corner of a workshop in Meriden, and as a gesture against the lost business, missing out on making WD Triumph 500 twins for the army, was given a contract to make on-board generator engines for Lancaster bombers, which he did by casting aluminium barels to go on 'old' speed-twin' crank-cases, and that became the post war Triump 'Trophy' engine.
However, over at Climax, they were asked to build a high speed engine for a fire tenders, and 'appliences' including emergency generators.
Intension was it could easily be air-lifted, and had to be man-portable, so was designed in lightweight, pressure cast aluminium; and to get the best performance from minimum mass, they used GP racing technology, and double overead cam-shafts with an incredibly over square dimensions....
BUT, by accounts, shortages meant that the thing was never built and tested before hostililes ceased, so at the end of the war they were left with this brilliant little engine, and nothing to fit it to...... so the prototypes and tooling all sat on the shelf for five or six years....
Then all of a sudden, rationing ended, and the low grade 'pool' petrol was augmented by decent 'high octane' and people started pondering 'performance' applications again.
The FIA rules for competition were also relaxed to favour small constructors, introducing 'homologation' for sprots cars and the like, while banning supercharging and other 'stuff' that had seen pre-war GP competition a budget war between the big fasciest regimes.....
Anyway, I dont believe that the climax engine had exactly been 'forgotten', becouse when the 'lads' like Cooper and Brabham were looking for an engine to power an open wheeler, that complied with the FIA 1500cc limit, the climax motor was quickly offered to them.
It did NOT go into the Hilman Imp!
That is a complete Myth.....
As is the legend that they used one in a prototype Imp.
The suggestion was that given the 'brief' to make a 'small, mini-like car, with a hillman pedigree, that HAD to be a 'drivers' car with sporting pretensions', they turned to the Climax for 'inspiration'.
The Hilman Imp, had a 'similar' all aluminium slant four, displacing HALF the Climax's 1500cc's. It was a 750cc engine, with completely different tapogrophy. It only had one cam-shaft to start with......
BUT, it was heavily influenced by the Climax, and there was a lot of suggestion that they could 'double up' an Imp motor to make a 1500cc V8, which with DOHC, could have been a rather potent device for competition; BUT Lord Roots, by the time the Imp was put on the tracks, was already well aware of the fact that having built up the forth largest motor manufacturing company in the world, that as a manufacturing instrument, it was an old 'banger'......
Basically, the Imp was a last ditch attempt at 'modernising' his manufacturing facilites which were wholey antiquated, and innefficient.
He KNEW that the Imp was ten years too late, and also that he barely had the money to develop that and the facilities to meke it, let alone the rest of his factories, let alone do something as financially wreckless as go racing!
What he was doing though, was building something, new, shiny and at the cutting edge that he could walk GM & Chrysler executives around, in order to flog the whole thing off for top dollar...... basically, he was chucking sawdust in the gearbox and painting over the filler, to flog the banger off..... to be honest, its amazing that Chrysler suffered the company as long as it did, MORE that the management then bought it back off them!
Meanwhile, the Climax engine was made 'obsolete' by the Ford-Shelby AC Cobra, with its 7l motor, becouse when the 'sportscars' started lapping tracks quicker than the 'premier' open wheelers, the FIA decided perhaps they ought to allow the construtors to use bigger engines, and upped teh capacity limit from 1500cc to 3.5l..... and allowed the Rover V8 to be the ONLY genuine production engine to win a formula one GP......
Unfortunately, at the same time, they lifted the ban on supercharging, to allow the 'old' 1500's to be made competative agianst the new 'big' motors.
BRM attempted to supercharge the climax, and in the trying, made it almost undriveable, making every-one else look elsewhere for motive power.
Ford Commissioned Cosworth to build the DFV, and Renault remembered they had 'invented' the turbo-charger..... an idea BMW picked up on, taking the 1602(?) engine from thier little saloon, tearing everything off it but the core plugs, boring it as big as they could, fitting a short stroke crank, aluminium DOHC head, and a big blower.... to make the only other 'production' engine that 'might' claim to have won an F1 GP.
OF course, there is the curiocity of the 'original' Lotus Elan, which Collin Champman dumped Climax motors into the first hundred or so........
Either way; the Climax DID exist, it was originally intended as a fire pump engine, or at least 'static applience' engine, and I believe it WAS fitted to some propane powered fork-lifts.
It was NOT fitted, even in prototype form to the Hilman imp.
It WAS fitted to a limited number of 'homologation special' Lotus Elan's.
