I’m very pro animal names for cars. There’s rarely been a car named for an animal that I’ve felt wasn’t a great car name. Sunbeam Tiger, Mercury Cougar, Shelby Cobra, DeTomaso Mangusta, Chevy Impala, Dodge Viper, Studebaker Hawk, Dodge Colt, and so on, all great names. Invertebrates are tricky, though. Sure, Beetles, Spiders, Hornets, and other insects can work, but other invertebrates? Not so much.
There’s never been a successful car named for Jellyfish or snails or worms or anything like that. But I respect a carmaker that might try it, which is why I was thinking about this particular car, the Hillman Slug. Now, to be fair, the Slug was never really an official name – it was the moniker given to the prototypes of the car that became the Hillman Imp – but I always liked the idea that there could have been a car named the Slug.
And boy, did the slug earn its name! This car definitely felt like a slug, and, as improbable as it seems, I mean that in a good way. Look at it:
I mean, that car definitely has a number of strangely pleasing slug-like qualities, doesn’t it? An overall rounded lumpiness, eyes perched high, not quite on stalks, but also not quite not, diminutive but chubby, all sorts of sluggic qualities.
The Slug came about as a result of the Rootes group wanting a good cheap, entry-level car, even before the Mini hit the scene. When the Suez oil crisis of 1956 happened, it just made the need for something small and efficient even more clear.
Rootes was looking at other successful small cars of the era, like the Beetle, Renault 4CV, and Fiats 500 and 600, which were all rear-engined, and so started there, which seemed like the future at the time. They initially were thinking of using a Villers air-cooled flat-twin, mounted at the rear:
In that sketch, you can see the sort of sluggy styling ideas happening, and there were full models built with the design you see above:
The wide-set eyes and that full-width grimace-like grille give this version of the slug an expression like what one might make if you have to stick your hand in a toilet to unclog it. They also tried a version with a different headlight arrangement, which is what really interests me this morning:
Wow. For whatever reason, there is little one can do to a car to make it look more alien/insectile than jamming the headlights right next to each other. Headlight positioning is a really important factor in car design, and the closer together the lights get, the somewhat stranger the car can look. Just look at this early Volkswagen Golf prototype, then known as the Blizzard:
The Blizzard is on the left there, and those lights are just a bit closer together, but it changes that whole front end’s feeling dramatically, and for the, um, derpier.
Going all the way together with the headlights, like that Slug styling model, invariably makes a car’s face seem arachnid-like, or something similar. Look at the Morgan three-wheeler alongside a spider:
I’m sort of surprised that the Rootes designers even tried the close-set lights on that Slug prototype; what did they think it was going to look like?
I actually like the general look of the Slug; it seems friendly, and the space utilization in that sort of inflated-seeming body was pretty good. I don’t even mind the Slug name for a car name. Slugs are resilient and resourceful, they’re survivors that are good at what they do. Sure, they don’t like salt, but cars aren’t crazy about that, either, if we’re honest. You’ve seen what Michigan winters and road salt do to body panels. I’m not saying a car called a Slug would have been a success, but I am saying I think I’d have liked it.
Eventually, the Slug project developed into Project Apex, which grew into the Imp, which I think was quite handsome in its own right. There’s an Apex prototype above there, and I think you can see how it’s slowly becoming what we’d know as the Imp.
Maybe there’s an alternate universe out there were people were going to track days to battle Minis in their Slugs. One can dream!
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