Reliant: The Jester with a Secret Knighthood
No car company in history has ever suffered from such a profound and comical case of split personality as Reliant. To the vast majority of the world, the name Reliant means one thing: a wobbly, pathetic, three-wheeled plastic pig, famous for being the butt of every joke and for being driven by a hapless halfwit in a sitcom. The Reliant Robin is, without question, one of the most ridiculed vehicles ever made. And yet, at the very same time, from the very same factory, this company was also building a sleek, powerful, and genuinely cool V6-powered sporting estate that was so sophisticated, its most famous owner was the Princess Royal. This is the story of a company that was simultaneously a national joke and a purveyor of fine cars to the Royal Family. It is a tale of magnificent, glorious absurdity.
The company was founded in Tamworth in 1935, and from the very beginning, its focus was on cheap, simple, three-wheeled vehicles. This wasn't because they were mad; it was a clever exploitation of a loophole in British law. A three-wheeler was taxed and licensed as a motorcycle, making it vastly cheaper for a working-class family to own and run than a proper, four-wheeled car. For decades, Reliant was the king of this frugal, three-wheeled world, building thousands of vans, saloons, and estates for people who valued low running costs above all else, including, it seems, their own dignity.
The National Joke
The most famous of these creations was, of course, the Reliant Robin, launched in 1973. It was a masterpiece of minimalist, cost-cutting design. The body was made of cheap fibreglass, and it was powered by Reliant's own small but surprisingly robust all-aluminium engine. Its single front wheel made it alarmingly unstable in a corner, and its reputation was forever sealed by the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses, where the hopelessly ambitious Trotter brothers drove a filthy, perpetually backfiring three-wheeled Reliant Regal van. The car became a national symbol of cheerful, plucky failure.
To drive a Reliant Robin was to be the subject of constant mockery. Other drivers would point and laugh. Small children would cheer. And yet, for a certain type of person in a certain type of Britain, it was a sensible, practical, and deeply patriotic choice. It was a car that thumbed its nose at sophistication.
The Princess's Sports Car
And now for the twist. While one half of the Reliant factory was churning out these plastic pigs, the other half was building one of the coolest and most forward-thinking cars of the era. The Reliant Scimitar GTE, launched in 1968, was a genuine trailblazer. It was a high-performance "shooting brake," a concept that combined the sleek lines of a sports coupe with the practicality of an estate car. It was a car for the discerning country gentleman who had dogs and shotguns, but also wanted to do 120 mph on the new motorway.
The body was, naturally, made of fibreglass, but this time it was a sleek, aggressive shape penned by the designers at Ogle. Power came from a brawny 3.0-litre Ford V6 engine, the same one found in the Capri. It was fast, it was practical, and it was incredibly cool. And its ultimate seal of approval came from its most famous owner: Princess Anne. The fact that the Queen's only daughter, a no-nonsense, famously tough character, chose to drive a Reliant Scimitar for years tells you everything you need to know about its quality and character.
A Tale of Two Factories
It is almost impossible to reconcile the two sides of the Reliant story. On one side of the factory wall, you had men in oily overalls building a car so basic it was a national joke. On the other, you had craftsmen fitting leather seats to a high-performance GT car destined for a royal palace. No other car company in the world has ever operated with such a bizarre, self-contradictory product plan.
The Scimitar was a critical and commercial success for a time, a car that genuinely had no rivals. It was a practical sports car, a concept that the rest of the world wouldn't catch up with for decades. It proved that the engineers at Reliant, when given a proper budget and a decent brief, could create a world-class machine.
The Inevitable End
Sadly, the good times couldn't last. The three-wheeler market, Reliant's bread and butter, eventually disappeared as proper small cars became cheaper, more efficient and safe. The Scimitar, a product of the 1960s, was becoming old and outdated by the 1980s, and the company didn't have the money to replace it.
Reliant struggled on for years, a shadow of its former self, before finally fizzling out of existence in the early 2000s. The company that had built cars for plumbers and princesses was gone. Its legacy is one of the strangest in motoring history. It is a company remembered by most for a wobbly, three-wheeled joke. But for a discerning few, it is remembered as the creator of one of the most handsome, innovative, and coolest sports cars Britain has ever produced. It was a jester, but it was a jester that secretly wore a crown.