Shipping and Bureaucracy

When I first had the idea to do this trip, I asked Lang Kidby how he shipped his Fiat 500. He suggested Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) and said that it had cost about $1000 including fees. This sounded pretty reasonable so I persisted.

WWL offered a roll on roll off service from Fremantle to Vladivostok for US$1000 plus various fees that brought it up to about AUS$1500. I initially contacted WWL's office in Brisbane who after the initial quote put me onto their Melbourne office who then put me onto their Perth office. All of them were very helpful but were unable to answer the two big questions - how much and when does out need to go so as to arrive in Vladivostok in the first week of June? The very nice chap at WWL Fremantle suggested I contact a shipping agent, RyanCook at AAW Global Logistics. I had not realised that an agent was pretty much mandatory to get the paper work done.

Ryan was able to broker a deal with WWL to ship the car roll-on-roll-off via Yokohama. The only problem was that we couldn't plan when to send it because the second shilling line, FESCO, had not published their schedule for May/June. Eventually we made an informed guess and decided to send it on the Tamerlane. It needed to be delivered on Tuesday ? ready to sail on Thursday. This left just a couple of days to do some finishing touches on the car before driving it up to the docks at Fremantle. I was a bit nervous because the paperwork insists the car must not leak anything. The only British cars that don't leak a bit are those that have run out of oil. In the end it was not a bother. In the end the ship left on Sunday the 28th April and my boys and I were fortunate enough to see it depart. We were returning from my parents house north of Perth. The Tamerlane is like a huge white warehouse that floats.

WWL's policy is not to book the transhipment until after the vehicle leaves. It took weeks to find out which FESCO vessel the car would go on. Meanwhile, I needed to arrange a visa but not knowing when to arrive made that impossible. As time was running out I decided to go for a three month visa. This gives me a bit more flexibility. However, it is more complicated than the normal 30 day tourist visa. Before getting a Russian visa you have to get an invitation or visa support document. For a 30 day tourist visa you can get this though a hotel costing around $20. For the 30 day, double entry businesses visa I used an online visa service. I understood that the invitation would take 7 days but it ended up taking 14 days. This was cutting things a bit fine so I sent applications off for myself and my boys with mine taking the $330 2 day processing option. However, the next week it came back with a post it nota saying I Ned end send separate postal orders for each visa! I wish they had made that clear on their institutions. So I cashed I the postal order and sent everything back exactly as it was but with three postal orders for the same total.

The registered post tracking showed that the forms arrived on Friday. By Wednesday the next week I was wondering if my visa would get back in time for my flight on the Sunday. I must have spent quite a bit of Thursday trying to contact the consulate with no response. However, in the end they must have got sick of me as they emailed to say it had been sent Wednesday. Now post from Sydney to Bunbury can tasks a week so I was pretty sure i'dhave to postpone my flights and hotel. But in the end it turned up in Fridays post. Was I a happy chap.

About the car

When I decided to buy David Wogan's white Hillman Imp my intention was that doing so would allow me to take my blue Imp on the long journey.  My blue car is not ideal as a family runabout as it is noisy and (apparently) smelly.  I had removed all of the sound insulation when I restored the body in 1993 and although I've steadily added sealing and insulation its still quite noisy inside.

The problem is that I love my blue Imp too much to part with it and so over the next year or so the question became "can the white car be made reliable enough to attempt the long journey"?

When I purchased the white car Dad and I trailered itr to my parents property in Bindoon to finish it off and decide what to do with it.  David Worgan had started the restoration quire some years earlier and due to Ill health and other reasons had not quite finished the car.  Much had already been done so it shouldn't have taken much to get it up and running.

I should have known better.  She resisted every effort. The new brake cylinders needed removing and cleaning, new flexible brake hoses were required, it wouldn't run until a brand new carby was fitted and then we realised that the gear box was not working properly.  Dad rebuilt the gearbox but it still wasn't quite right so he fitted the one from his own car.  New kingpins, seatbelts and an electronic thermometer were fitted. The car was tested and deemed roadworthy at the end of August 2012.  A few weeks later I tried to drive it the 220km home to Eaton.  It made about 10km before overheating!  As this wasn't altogether a surprise,  my sister who was following, towed me to her house.

Cooling is often an Imp's biggest problem.  As standard, Imps have a rear radiator with a belt driven fan that blows air from the back of the car though the radiator and out underneath the car.  David had an electric fan blowing from the front backwards. I decided to persist with this flow direction but made a cowling to scoop as much air as possible from under the car and use the ram effect to push this though the rad. This is supplemented by a 10" electric fan behind the rad and switched on either manually or by the electronic thermometer.

On my first run to test this adaption, I set off after putting my boys to bed around a 10km loop near home.  All was going well and the temp stayed low. I gained confidence and started enjoying myself. So, entering a  90° left hand bend a bit faster, I braked hard when there was a loud bang followed by a grinding scraping noise.  My first thought was that I'd broken one of the new rotor flex joints. However, as far as I could see they were fine.  If not that I must have broken a crown wheel and pinion I was thinking.  Not long after a chap came along the road (its the sort of road you expect about 5 cars on a night) and offered me a ride home.  the next morning I drove back to investigate. The left side seemed okay but when I raised the right rear it was clear that Something was wrong. It turned out that a brake lining had come unstuck and was bringing itself to bits in the drum.  After driving home to rob the lings from my Ginetta, I was back driving the Imp in no time.

Cooling is still an issue. The car hasn.'t overheated since the duct was put on but it does get hotter that I'm happy with (90°C) up hills on a warm day (above 30°C). 

The beginning of an idea - or "where did I go so horribly wrong"

The first time I thought of driving a Hillman Imp on an epically long journey was in 1990 while I was living in the UK. the idea then was to drive across Southern Europe, through the Middle East, India and down through Thailand to Singapore.  Of course, until Myanmar is open, that trip is not possible.

Driving across Siberia and into Europe became the germ of an idea when watching an ABC television programme recreating the Peking to Paris from 1907.  If veteran cars could do it, surely a modern miracle like the Hillman Imp could too.  

The idea steadily solidified after reading Lang and Bev Kidby,s account of driving from Vladivostok in a Fiat 500 and books such as Peter Jean's "Long Road to London" and Bevan Sharp's "Globe Trotting by Vintage Car".

The idea perhaps became a dream with the announcement of the Imp Club's celebrations to mark 50 years since the start of Imp production in May 1963.  The dream grew into a possibility when I purchased David Worgan's white Imp. 

I'll let you know if the possibility grew into a reality in August.

how far can you drive a Hillman Imp?

Does the idea of driving a small 48 year old car across Russia and on to the UK seem crazy?

Well of course it does.  But don't tell the men in white coats because that is what I'm hoping to do this June.