Britain's defunct ICI Fibres Laboratory developed the fibre in the early 1950s and named it after the Crimple Valley in which the company was situated.
During the 1984 election campaign, Hunt coined the term "Crimplene Suit and Skoda Brigade" for Social Credit.
The car also got a political reputation at the General Election in 1984, when a defeated National Party MP, Pat Hunt, derisively referred to his Social Credit Party opponent, Neil Morrison, who won the seat as a member of "the Crimplene suit and Škoda brigade".